


Memento

by audentes_fortuna_iuvat



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: A Study in Sherlock, Adlock, Angst, Behind the Scenes, Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Character Analysis, Character Study, Derogatory Language, Drug Use, Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Episode: s01e02 The Blind Banker, Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia, Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Head canons Abound, Het and Slash, I am not Sherlock, Kid Sherlock, Love, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person Limited, Pining Sherlock, Porn With Plot, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, Pre-A Study in Pink, Pre-Canon, Present Tense, Romance, Series 1 and 2 Compliant, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlock as a child, Sherlock deduces what love really is, Sherlock does not love Irene though, Sherlock in Love, Sherlock is Not a Virgin, Sherlock's Childhood, Sherlock's Heart, Sherlock's Mind Palace, Sherlock's Past, Sherlock-centric, The deductions are probably shit, fair warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:26:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2005728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audentes_fortuna_iuvat/pseuds/audentes_fortuna_iuvat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock remembers flashes of time the way lightning strikes and thunder sounds during storms: suddenly and overwhelmingly.  Some memories flood back like the opening of a dam, others yet like a broken tap, slow and steady and weak.  And at the center of them all lies John Watson, the axis mundi of Sherlock Holmes' life.  Time floats on with John, and Sherlock starts to realize he's dividing his life into two categories: Pre-John and With-John.  As the axis turns harder and faster for Sherlock, he feels his life both coming together and unraveling at the same time.  And soon, Sherlock finds himself in his greatest deduction yet, that of his mind and his heart, and finally sees how a self-professed 'high functioning sociopath' falls in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Gentle reminder that since I started writing this fic waaaay back before series 3 came out, I wrote my head canons unapologetically, like drug of choice and Mummy and Father and such. And though I like canon!Mummy and Father, Sherlock's actual drug of choice, and generally how the entire canon developed over series 3, I didn't want to bother with the revisions. Also, Brit-picked by me in certain areas, but not all. I'm an American Londoner, but I ain't perfect. You understand. 
> 
> And, a very big thank you to btch_sprinkles for not only beta'ing this fic, but encouraging me and being an amazing friend to me. Love you, soul sister. <3 
> 
> Also, if you get my cross-fandom/historical references, I'll give you a prize. :D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What people don’t seem to realize is that Sherlock’s powers of deduction aren’t so much an involuntary ability as they are a learned skill. Yes, Sherlock’s parents have had his IQ tested and yes, it’s very high. Yes, he’s much more observant than the average person, and it’s not that he can’t keep his mouth shut but that he just doesn’t see the point of doing so.

Sherlock remembers what life was like before he met John.  He lives alone in a small, one bedroom flat on Montague Street.  Once a week, Mycroft sends a cleaning lady over because god forbid Sherlock ever clean up after himself.  Sherlock likes his flat because it’s close to St Bart’s and right across the street from the British Museum.  Secretly, he loves the British Museum.  Everyone thinks Sherlock hates it because of how crowded it is and how many tourists litter the exhibits.  Everyone thinks Sherlock can’t filter through the barrage of information that’s presented to him.

 

_Cheating on his wife of 13 years_

_Cancer patient hiding his diagnosis from his children_

_American pretending to be English_

_Suffering from manic depression_

_Alcoholic for at least five years_

_Teenage girl trying to hide the hickey on her neck_

But actually, Sherlock is fully capable of filtering through the information.  In fact, he’s even able to not notice a thing if that’s what he wants.  Normally though, Sherlock doesn’t do this.  He still likes to know what’s going on around him.

What people don’t seem to realize is that Sherlock’s powers of deduction aren’t so much an involuntary ability as they are a learned skill.  Yes, Sherlock’s parents have had his IQ tested and yes, it’s very high.  Yes, he’s much more observant than the average person, and it’s not that he can’t keep his mouth shut but that he just doesn’t see the point of doing so.

Sherlock loves to look at all the ancient exhibits, all the skulls and bones of people who were alive thousands of years ago.  He wishes he could deduce them, wishes he could know every minute detail of their primitive lives.  What did they like to eat?  What streets did they like to walk down the most?  Did they like music?  Did they know how to read?  Who loved them most in the world?

Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly lonely, Sherlock spends all day in the museum.  He looks at the royal Egyptian mummies and wonders what it would be like to have his brain liquefied in his head and pulled out through his nose.  He looks at the Egyptian sarcophagi of Roman emigrants and wonders what it was about Egypt that made them want to live their lives there instead of Italy.  He looks at all the ancient pottery and tools and statues, and wonders how all this history led up to him.  He shuffles around the exhibits all day and silently wonders what it would be like to still be him, but an ancient version that prayed to gods and went to festivals and fought in battles and argued politics and married a young woman he didn’t know and lived a normal life.

Sherlock’s never told anyone about this.  Everyone already thinks he’s freakish enough.  But then, Sherlock doesn’t really have any friends to tell this to anyway.  He’s got his skull, but he doesn’t really count, does he?

 

* * *

 

People are always shocked to learn Sherlock’s as young as he is, not even out of his twenties yet.  His whole life, people have always assumed he’s much older than he is because of the way he looks and the way he dresses and the way he carries himself.  Sometimes, Sherlock will even go so far as to reveal his birthday to stunned strangers just to get them to shut up.

“6th January 1981,” he’ll say, rolling his eyes.  “It’s always been 6th January 1981.”

The last time he had to say this was to an old friend of Mummy’s called Frannie.  He’d gone round to visit not long after his birthday with Mycroft one Sunday.  His mother, never one to pass up bragging about either of her sons, boasted about her baby boy the chemist and how he’d just turned 28 and could you even believe it!  Mycroft had laughed into his teacup at Sherlock; he never missed an opportunity to try to embarrass him.

“Yes, my baby brother,” Mycroft drawls.  “The _chemist_ ,” he finishes, implying something more as he flashes Frannie that conciliatory grin he flashes everyone.

“And my _big_ brother,” Sherlock strains, with an equally implying tone.  “The diplomat.”  They glare at each other for a few moments, like they’re trying to stare bullet holes into the other.  But their mother swats them affectionately with the newspaper and reminds them that they’re brothers and to behave.  They both cross their arms, Mycroft to try to hide his body and Sherlock to get his arms to stop aching with cravings.  

Mummy pretends not to notice though and instead recounts a story to dear old Frannie about a time when six year old Sherlock flung his plate of roast lamb and carrots at Mycroft for making fun of his haircut.  It’s one of Mummy’s favorites and Sherlock doesn’t remember how many times he’s heard it now.  She’s so proud of her sons; the government official and the professional chemist/amateur detective (though you’d never hear Sherlock ever describe himself as an amateur anything).  Never mind the fact that one of them is a recovering drug addict and the other a narcissistic misanthrope.  As long as you ignore the unpleasant though, the unpleasant will simply fade away.  

British sentimentality at it’s most high.  Keep calm and carry on and all that tripe.

Sherlock remembers filtering for the rest of that conversation, instead sitting in the room marked UNSOLVED MURDER CASES in his mind palace to see if he can resolve anything.  He doesn’t.  It only makes him more annoyed and irritated.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers the two people he’s ever had, what normal people would call, relationships with.  At Eton, there’d been a boy he’d liked called David.  He’d always been kind to Sherlock and laughed at his jokes about their classmates and never called him “freak.”  Sherlock supposes David was his best friend  _only_ because he was his only friend.  But David had been very popular, he had lots of friends and would sneak out of the grounds at night and smoke cigarettes and had lots of girlfriends that lived in town.  Sherlock remembers wondering what David was doing even hanging around him at all.  

“What, I can’t just think you’re ace?” Sherlock remembers David asking him one day as he helped Sherlock collect the books that had been smacked out of his hands.  Sherlock remembers giving David a funny look, which David laughed at and then ushered Sherlock up to his room to listen to music and make fun of all their instructors.

David and Sherlock stayed friends all throughout school, but Sherlock never did become friends with any of David’s.  None of them liked him, constantly making fun of Sherlock in front of him and always barking at David why he even bothered with that mental arsehole Sherlock Holmes.  

As they got older, Sherlock started to hear the whispers around campus.   _Poofters, faggots, arse bandits, nancy boys._  Sherlock didn’t care though, only because David didn’t seem to care.  They kept on being mates, kept on not caring.  They smoked pot together and listened to music together and waxed philosophical about life together.  And Sherlock watched David get more and more popular and shag more and more girls and felt more and more jealous, though he couldn’t figure out why.  

But then one night after David smuggled in some cheap wine for him and Sherlock.  This wasn’t anything new, but they got pissed and Sherlock was nothing short of surprised when David kissed him on the football pitch.  Sherlock remembers he had never felt more nervous than in that moment; inexperience was never something Sherlock dealt with well.   He also remembers realizing why he’d been so jealous, as the shape of David’s lips formed over his own.

“We don’t have to do anything…” David breathed against Sherlock’s mouth after a while.  Somehow, he’d managed to unbutton Sherlock’s shirt and get his trousers halfway off.

“No…I want to,” Sherlock whispered before going back to kissing him.

And then David showed him what he’d been missing all that time locked up in the lab with his chemicals or in his room with his music.

But then they lost touch.  Sherlock went to Oxford and David to Cambridge.  They wrote to each other in the first few months, even took the train to London a couple of times to spend the day together and would end up snogging in Regent’s Park.  But then life happened, nothing special or momentous in particular, and Sherlock and David simply faded apart.

A few years later at university, there’d been a girl called Samantha.  She didn’t have many friends either, but she was a genius at chemistry and Sherlock loved talking to her about all their different experiments.  One night in the lab, while they’d been working on a difficult project for their class, Samantha had kissed him and he kissed her back.  Sherlock remembers being nervous with Samantha too because he’d never been with a woman and was afraid he wouldn’t know how to please her.  But Samantha had been a willing teacher and Sherlock loved to learn new things.

Sherlock refuses to say what they’d been doing was “dating.”  It’s just so pedestrian.  But that’s what happened.  Sherlock and Samantha kept on with each other for over three years.  They even lived together for a little while when Samantha had to move out of her flat because of a horrible row with her flatmate.  Sherlock remembers the first time she’d told him she loved him.  

He’d made a joke while in the queue and she just said it.

“I love you, Sherlock.”

His eyes went wide and he didn’t know what to say.  He supposed he did love her, if he had to guess.  He certainly didn’t hate her.  Samantha was kind and caring and patient, she never yelled at Sherlock when he annoyed her or when he just wanted to be left alone.  He knew he was comfortable with her, but Sherlock’s never really thought about what love is though.  

“It’s ok, Sherlock.  You don’t have to say anything,” Samantha reassured him.

But then Sherlock had discovered that wonderful thing cocaine and he loved how he could stay awake for days and work and not have to eat a single thing.  Sure, sometimes he’d scream.  Sure, sometimes he’d throw things around.  Sure, he wanted sex much more frequently.  She tolerated it because she loved him even though it scared her.

But one night, Sherlock had an incredibly vivid hallucination about an old friend of Mummy’s and her abusive husband.  She’d come round once and a while, and Sherlock was fond of her because she always brought special treats just for him.  But Mummy would sometimes shut Sherlock out of the room when Mrs Hudson would come over, and talk in harsh whispers behind closed doors.  Mummy nor Mrs Hudson ever knew Sherlock would secretly stand at the door and listen to all the awful things Mr Hudson did to his wife.    
  
So when Sherlock thought he was getting his chance to finally fight back for her, he felt just and righteous.  But then he heard Samantha scream, and he realized he was on the verge of becoming the monster that was Mr Hudson.  Sherlock begged her to forgive him, cried about how he’d never hurt her.  But Samantha couldn’t take it anymore.  She left Sherlock to save herself.  She never looked back.

It only made him want the cocaine more.

 

* * *

 

“Well, Sherlock?”

Sherlock shuffles around the body, silently taking in and filtering through the data.

“Sherlock, anything, please.”

“Inspector, I found traces o-- oh God, him again?!”

Sherlock ignores the idiotic CSI, God, what’s his name -- Petersen, Christiansen, Sorensen.  Whatever.

“He contaminates the crime scene, the body, everything!  Why do you let him in here to muck everything up?!”

“Mark Breckenridge, aged 37, recently married, worked in aviation from the faint smell of jet fuel.  Had an affinity for Nepal, 3 jewelry items and his shirt are all made from fabric found there, that and he’s also got a 5 ruppe note and a bus ticket from Kathmandu dated 4 years ago in his wallet.”

In the background, Sherlock hears the irritating man yell, “He touched the body?!”

Sherlock continues, “Prone to anxiety disorders judging by the biting of his nails and wrinkles around his lips.  He also seems to have adhered to Hinduism, possibly for his wife.”

“His wife?”  The annoying CSI officer croaks.

“Yes, his wife,” Sherlock says, brandishing a picture of the couple at their traditional Hindu ceremony and handing it to Lestrade.

“There’s also pamphlets in his pocket, some clean, some marked up with hate speech.  This neighborhood is littered with white supremacists, a leading member lives right down the street, I think.  You might find it useful to question every man on this street, you’re likely to find your murderer quite easily,” Sherlock concludes, walking out of the room.

Lestrade, looking impressed, says to Andersen, “That’s why I let him in here.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock hates the country, he always has.  He’s always loved the bustle of the city, the smell of it, the way the air feels.  He likes having lots of people to deduce and figure out.  What Sherlock doesn’t like are animals.  Pigs and cows walking around, loose amongst the people.  It’s disgusting.  And horses, horses are the worst of all.  Sherlock’s done his best to keep it secret the reason why he hates horses.  Only a few people know the reason why, Mycroft being one of them.  

Their father had made Mycroft and Sherlock take horse riding lessons when they were boys.  He said it would make them fine, upstanding, well rounded gentlemen.  Sherlock was always uncomfortable riding the animals because they’re bigger than he is and have minds of their own.  One day, his horse was being particularly unruly and Sherlock couldn’t control him.  The horse threw him, and Sherlock fell and broke his arm.  He remembers some of the children laughing at him because he was the only one who could never get his horse to yield to him.  He remembers Mycroft running to him because he was crying, and Mycroft yelling for someone to get a doctor or a nurse or someone, anyone!  Sherlock also remembers pushing Mycroft away nastily because he already looked weak enough in front of the other children and he didn’t need his meddling older brother adding to the embarrassment.

Neither one of them has ever brought this up; Sherlock, because it’s too embarrassing, and Mycroft, because it’s too painful.  Sometimes, Mummy will bring it up at dinners or luncheons because she remembers it very differently from the boys.  Mummy simply remembers it as the time Sherlock fell and Mycroft took care of him.  Neither of them stops her when she tells it because they both know that it means something to her, even if they hate it.  For Mummy, it means something special remembering a time when Mycroft showed how much he loved his younger brother and Sherlock showing how much he loved his older brother by accepting that love.  But when she tells it, they both have the most strained looks on their faces, and they never comment or add to the story, even if she begs them to.  Mummy will never understands it and, the boys will never explain.

 

* * *

 

“See, I told you!  I’ll _always_ win, Sherlock.”

“No!  We’re not finished!  Give me another one, I’ll beat you this time!”

Mycroft lowers himself to stare into the eyes of eight year old Sherlock.  Sherlock tries to seem brave by staring back.  

“Fine.  One last one.”  Mycroft straightens himself and looks out the window of the sitting room.  “Mrs Spencer, across the way,” he points lazily.

“Mummy’s friend, Mrs Spencer?”  Sherlock asks sheepishly.

“Yes, Mummy’s _friend_ ,” Mycroft condescends.

Sherlock sits in his favorite chair and closes his eyes, mentally going over everything he knows about dear, sweet, lovely Mrs Spencer.

 

_Philippa Spencer, born Philippa Courtney, originally from Brighton, birth year 1938, pretends it’s 1942.  Married George Spencer 1960, 4 children, Georgiana, Eliza, Harriet, and William.  Secretly abuses quaaludes, has wanted to divorce Mr Spencer for at least 10 years, owns no property or money, plastic surgery around the eyes and mout--_

“Faster, Sherlock, I haven’t got all day!”

Sherlock speeds out all he knows about Mrs Spencer and all the things he’s deduced, even firing off things he didn’t have time to think about.  When he’s finished, he flashes Mycroft a smug smile, knowing for once he’s finally got the best of him.  Mycroft crosses the room, once again lowering himself to glare into Sherlock’s eyes.

“Don’t try to be smart, Sherlock.  I’m the smart one,” Mycroft hisses.  He turns on his heels, hands in his pockets, and makes towards the door.  

“What’d I miss?”  Sherlock calls after him.  “Tell me, what did I miss?!”  He says, running after Mycroft, pulling on his arm.  Mycroft shakes him off roughly and Sherlock almost falls backwards.  

“Oh, just everything of importance,” he mutters carelessly as he walks away.

Sherlock never did find out what he missed.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read and review? It's good for the soul!! XX K


	2. The Skull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock remembers when he took that skull. It wasn’t long after he got the job at Bart’s five years ago as a clinical chemist, which was nice because they let him come in whenever he wanted and stay as long as he liked, just as long as he met deadlines. He was also allowed use of lab supplies for experiments as long as they weren’t too extravagant or expensive. Sherlock always thought this was strange since Bart’s is funded by the British government until he remembered that Mycroft is the British government. Sherlock pretends he doesn’t know Mycroft has arranged for him to have access to lab supplies simply because it’s convenient for him and it keeps his boredom at bay.

A week after John moves in, Sherlock begins to notice things.

John never eats raspberry jam.  John never takes sugar in his tea or coffee.  John doesn’t like wearing socks.  If John doesn’t sleep well the night before, he falls asleep sitting upright in his arm chair.  Little things like this.

Today, John accidentally puts on too much aftershave and Sherlock can smell him before he’s even in the room.   Sherlock leers at him as he plops down in the armchair.  Almost like John knows what he’s thinking, he says, “Sorry, the aftershave spilled.”

Sherlock turns to face the back of the couch and smiles to himself.  John picks up the newspaper and sighs.  He wants to read but can’t find the interest.

“Nothing good,” Sherlock mutters, more to the couch than to John.

John sighs again and sloppily folds the newspaper back up.

“Right,” he says, “you feel like breakfast?”

Sherlock peeks out from behind him to survey John.  He looks him up and down and quickly buries his head back into the couch cushions.

“Only if you change your shirt, that aftershave is awful.”

John laughs and goes back upstairs to his room.  He’s back in a few minutes with a fresh shirt and not smelling so badly.  Sherlock knows he’s there, but he’s still curled up into the back of the couch.  John makes a small sound and Sherlock pretends not to hear him.

“Well?  You coming then?”  John asks.

Sherlock grunts his reply and John rolls his eyes playfully.

“I’m going to Speedy’s.  See you there.”

By the time Sherlock strolls downstairs, he sees John’s ordered a full breakfast for him.  He even put the raspberry jam on his toast, just the way Sherlock likes.

* * *

“Oi, you want a cuppa?”

“What?”

“A cup of tea, do you want one?”

“ _You’re_ making tea?!”

“I do know how to make tea, John, yes!”

A second later, John pokes his head around the corner, his hair dripping water and shampoo down his face.  He squints at Sherlock, looking him up and down.

“What’d you put in it?”

“Nothing!”

He inspects Sherlock for a moment.  “You’re lying,” John says finally, turning back to the bathroom to finish his shower.

Sherlock groans and slips the flurazepam back into his dressing gown pocket. _Another Wednesday_ , he thinks.

* * *

Sherlock remembers when he took that skull.  It wasn’t long after he got the job at Bart’s five years ago as a clinical chemist, which was nice because they let him come in whenever he wanted and stay as long as he liked, just as long as he met deadlines.  He was also allowed use of lab supplies for experiments as long as they weren’t too extravagant or expensive.  Sherlock always thought this was strange since Bart’s is funded by the British government until he remembered that Mycroft _is_ the British government.  Sherlock pretends he doesn’t know Mycroft has arranged for him to have access to lab supplies simply because it’s convenient for him and it keeps his boredom at bay.

About two months after he starts at Bart’s, a doe-eyed girl begins work as a new medical examiner.  She’s tiny and shy and sometimes can’t seem to find the courage to hold people’s eye contact.  He soon finds out her name is Molly Hooper and is completely surprised to learn that she’s two years older than him.  He really shouldn’t be though.

Molly is introverted and quiet, but not in the way Sherlock is quiet.  Sherlock is quiet the way a tiger is before it pounces on its prey.  Sherlock is quiet in order to better observe the people around him.  Sherlock is quiet by choice.  Molly though, she’s silent because she doesn’t know what to say, or how to say it without her voice croaking to life.  Sometimes she stammers or chatters excitedly when she’s around him.  These are the times Sherlock filters the most.  He couldn’t tell you even if he wanted to what she says during these times.  But when Molly talks about work, she’s forceful, strong, confident.  When she’s examining a body, testing for trace chemicals, running tox screens, Molly is thorough.  Molly is comfortable.  Molly is certain.  

Sherlock has evaluated her work -- it’s sound and competent.  So he has no choice but to like her, even if most of their personal conversations are strained and uncomfortable because Molly is constantly asking what he’s doing for dinner, or if his girlfriend got him something nice for Valentine’s Day, or what he likes to do when he’s not working.  Molly gives him access to the morgue when she shouldn’t, to bodies when she’s already officially finished the paperwork on them, and for whatever reason, because Molly liked him first.

So one night, after sneaking into the morgue to examine how eyeballs deteriorate after death, Sherlock finds a skeleton that Molly has only partially completed putting together.  Her interns cleaned the bones nicely, but judging from the precision of their pristine condition, Molly finished the job.  Sherlock realizes the skull isn’t connected like he thought, and picks it up to examine it closely.  He can tell Molly’s taken care of these bones; even when the flesh and meat and brain are gone, Molly still thinks of them as people.  Sherlock processes through the bones of the face as he examines it.  

 

_Frontal, parietal, sphenoid, temporal, nasal, and zygomatic bones; maxilla: zygomatic, nasal, alveolar, and palatine processes..._

 

The skull in his hands had belonged to a man, black, who had a significant tie to France in his ancestry.  He’d been in his late 20’s, early 30’s when he died.  Well fed and healthy, he’d died from something unrelated to his health.  A traffic accident maybe, or a break in at his home.  Sherlock bends down to examine the rest of the bones and finds tiny holes in both radii.  Sherlock knows those marks, where the needle digs in too deep because you’re just that thirsty for the rush.  

 

_These bones belonged to a man who was a drug addict._

 

He stands there, by the slab, staring at the bones of this once-human, wide eyed and empty.  He had been Sherlock’s age, a little taller than him, his weight, he even had the same high cheekbones his mother loves to run her thumb across.  This skeleton, this man, he is a mirror of Sherlock, of what Sherlock could become.  Another nameless corpse whose flesh and organs have been thrown away in bags marked HUMAN WASTE.

There’s no name tag on this slab, no paperwork either.  Only scissors and glue and sutures to articulate the bones back together so they can hang in the corner of a room for first year medical students to gawk at.  Sherlock picks up the skull again and stares into the space where eyes used to be.  He wonders why it’s so easy to look at the skulls in the museum and why it’s so nauseating to look at this one.  

  
_Those were skeletons of people from thousands, sometimes millions of years ago.  They stopped being people long before any of us were even born._

Sherlock supposes it’s hard because this skeleton only recently ceased to be a person.  This person left a wake of devastation after his death.  This person can still be felt by the people he left behind.  

Sherlock slams the skull down and sits on the nearby stool.  He hangs his head and runs his fingers through his curls in an anxious rush.  He does this for longer than he realizes while he calms his breathing.  He shakes out the horrible thoughts that it could just as easily be him on the slab, nothing but bones and needle marks, and this man standing over him, looking at him wondering who it is that’s most affected by his death.  He can’t shake the desire to just know what his name was.  He looks back at the skull staring at him, empty, hollow, void.  In the recesses of his mind, he hears a young Mycroft say Billy.  He hasn’t thought about that in years.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, Sherlock snatches the skull and hides it in his coat under his arm.  He rushes home, sets it on his mantle, and stares at it while he prepares an injection.  He swears this’ll be the last one.  One last time.  

 

_Just one. Last. Time._

* * *

Today, Sherlock is moping about a lack of cases.  He’s laying on the couch trying not to enjoy the burn of his nicotine patches too much when he just can’t take the boredom anymore.  He groans loudly and launches himself off the couch.  

“ _Why_ do you insist on doing that?”

“What?”

“ _That!_ ”  John scolds, pointing at Sherlock with the newspaper to see him standing on the coffee table.  Sherlock looks at him genuinely confused and shrugs his shoulders.  John straightens himself angrily in his chair, resting his head in his hand.    
  
“Your mum never scolded you when you walk all over her furniture then?”

Again, Sherlock throws him a confused look as he says, “No, she yelled at me constantly about not standing on her tables.  She bought them all at auctions an--”

“Obviously didn’t make much of an impression with you, did it?”  John accuses, cutting Sherlock off.

“Yes, it did.  She’d always tell me, _‘Sherlock darling,'_ ” he says in a high pitched, affected voice and twiddling his fingers in the air, “‘ _when you have a home of your own, you can do whateeeever you want with the furniture.  Until then, stay off my antique mahogany!’_ So now I’m doing whatever I want with my furniture,” he finishes in a monotone voice.

John stares at him for a moment and then bursts out laughing, eventually going back to reading the newspaper.

“What’s so funny?”  Sherlock calls, still standing on the coffee table.

“You,” John says, wiping his eyes.  “Explains so much,” he says to himself.  

Sherlock finally gets off the coffee table when the doorbell rings.  Typical love affair case.  Man says he’ll pay anything to have his girlfriend followed.  Sherlock promptly kicks him out of the flat.  He doesn’t stop moping until Lestrade calls with a case at nine that night.  

Sherlock remembers promising John dinner at his favorite Indian place on Brick Lane if he’ll cancel his date to come with.  Sherlock also remembers hearing her scream at John through the phone to fuck off and never call her again.  He seems OK with it later that night after getting some samosas and chicken vindaloo into him.  John is easy to please like that.

* * *

Even John is shocked when he learns how young Sherlock is.  

“You mean, you were barely 29 when we first met?”  He exclaims one night over a Thai takeaway.  Sherlock sighs heavily, not wanting to have the discussion about how the year he was born has _always_ been 1981, and how the shock of finding that out doesn’t negate the fact. Sherlock is sitting on the floor and John on the couch, so he can barely see Sherlock roll his eyes when he huffs.  

“I’m still 29,” he states simply.  It’s that same tone of voice he takes with Anderson when he’s, well, talking.

“Yeah, I...I...get that now,” John says, realizing that with all the commotion of the first few days of their friendship they never really mentioned their ages, even in passing.

“I’m 35,” he blurts out.  Sherlock turns around to raise an eyebrow at him.  

“I know,” Sherlock says evenly, turning back to his food.  John sits quietly for a moment.  Sherlock seems to preternaturally know everything about him; it should stop surprising him to hear it said out loud.   
  
“How’d you know?”  John inquires.  He leans back into the couch so he can see Sherlock better if he turns around.  

“I’ve been told on many occasions it’s bad to talk about people’s ages,” he says simply as he continues to shove his food around on his plate.  Sherlock remembers lots of afternoon teas with Mummy and her indignant friends, always trying to look younger when it just made them look older.  He learned how to deduce age from all those afternoons with Mummy’s desperate friends.

John huffs behind him.  “Can’t think of a time _that’s_ ever stopped you,” he says dryly.

Sherlock glances at him over his shoulder.  John is leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest; one half of his mouth is upturned in a crooked smile, but he’s not really happy.  Amused is more like it.  He’s squinting his eyes that way he does when Sherlock’s said something wrong, but his smile isn’t one of those he smiles when he’s really frustrated or angry.  Like that smile John shot him when he had to correct Sherlock’s definition of a date or that time Sherlock made John travel across London to send a text from his own mobile.  This one’s more like that time Sherlock told John he was married to his work or the time Sherlock twirled him around to make him remember the Chinese graffiti.  He’s not mad or disappointed or irritated; he’s eager, astonished, like that first night in the cab.  

Sherlock turns around back to his plate and says quickly, “Depth of wrinkles in your forehead, firmness of the skin on your hands, your pock marks and acne scarring are only slightly visible, but still, the discoloration is just enough to tell your age.  Your clothing and fashion choices are in the style of most 30-40 years old now, trying to look younger but don’t feel younger.  There’s also an anti-aging cream in the bathroom you pretend you don’t use by putting it back in the same place every time.”  He turns around to face John but doesn’t look at him as he concludes, “I know you use it though.”  He looks up at John, “So you can stop pretending.”  

John laughs a genuine laugh and Sherlock breathes a sigh of relief.  He can’t figure out why though.  He already knows John likes him, why does he still feel so nervous about these things?

“I’m surprised you didn’t deduce my bloody birthday by the kind of socks I wear or the sound of my alarm clock!”  John exclaims.

“I dunno, it’s sometime this month, isn’t it?”  Sherlock returns to his food and mindlessly watching the telly.

“Yeah….”  John confirms slowly.  “How’d you know?”

“Because your sister won’t stop bloody texting you.”

John laughs again and rubs his eyes.  “Yeah, yeah I s’pose she has been a lot…” he says trailing off.  They don’t really talk for the rest of the night, just comments here and there about whatever programme is on.  Sherlock on the floor, John on the couch, John’s leg nearly touching Sherlock’s arm all night.  Sherlock hasn’t sat this close to another human being for this long in years.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'm going on holiday this weekend, but I'll try to post chapter three very soon! XX K


	3. The Pool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talking to Moriarty, Sherlock tries to pretend to seem uncaring and cavalier, like he can’t be bothered with Moriarty’s threats, or to even be pointing a gun at him. He remembers Moriarty telling him he’d burn his heart out and retorting that he, in fact, did not have one.
> 
> “But we both know that’s not quite true,” Sherlock remembers Moriarty cooing at him. He remembers Moriarty narrowing his eyes at him. He remembers thinking he should know what he means.

The next time they go out to eat is after they’ve solved a case.  After Sherlock finishes a case is when he eats the most, almost to the point of it being unhealthy.  He finds he doesn’t realize just how hungry he is until his mind is able to calm down.  Tonight, he and John are at Angelo’s.  John watches Sherlock in wide eyed horror as he devours two starters and a main.

“You really should eat more often,” John instructs.  “It’s not healthy for you to binge like this.”

“Whu…?”  Sherlock mumbles, his mouth full of chicken and potatoes.

“You sho – oh, nothing,” John sighs.  There’s no use in lecturing him.  Sherlock will never listen anyway.  John puts his fork down and looks around the restaurant.

“You gonna eat that?”  Sherlock asks as he motions to John’s plate of half eaten pasta with his head.

“I could do with a drink,” John says, cringing at Sherlock who doesn’t wait for John’s answer about finishing his dinner.  Sherlock is picking from both their plates now and John supposes he shouldn’t be bothered since they’re not exactly paying for anything tonight.

“Wonder where Angelo got off to…” John says under his breath as he cranes his neck to see if he can spot the man.  Finally he catches him and orders a scotch.

“Mmh, two scotches,” Sherlock adds, wiping his mouth with his hand.   John gives him a chiding look as he throws a serviette at him.  Sherlock looks at him apologetically and wipes his mouth with the cloth.

“Not good?”

“Bit not good.”

John chuckles at him as Angelo drops the drinks off at the table.

“Oh!  Can’t believe I forgot!”  Angelo says to himself and turns away from the pair.  He returns a few moments later with a lit candle.

“More romantic,” he says, tapping the edge of the table and winking at John.  Neither John nor Sherlock correct him.  Sherlock looks up at John just as he slurps a string of pasta into his mouth, and John can’t stop laughing.

 

* * *

“SHERLOCK!”

Face down, wrapped up in his covers, Sherlock opens a bleary eye at the sound of John howling his name from the kitchen.

“Of course there’s no milk!  There’s a tongue and 6 thumbs in our fridge, but GOD FORBID we have milk for the bloody tea!   _When_ am I gonna learn that you NEVER BUY MILK WHEN YOU SAY YOU WILL?”

Sherlock hears John banging around the kitchen, grunting his frustration and annoyance.  He hears John mutter, “All I want is some fucking milk, is that so much to ask?” before he leaves the flat for the surgery.  Sherlock chuckles softly and burrows back into his covers and pillows.

Secretly, Sherlock loves John’s tantrums.  Secretly, it makes Sherlock feel better about his own outbursts, like he’s not as strange as he thinks he is.  Secretly, they only endear him to Sherlock more.

 

* * *

****  


Sherlock remembers reading that there are 9 million people in London, so there has to be some children there who are like him.  He could make friends with boys and girls who are as smart and observant as he is.  He remembers Mummy promising him he’d make friends when he started at Dragon School.  But Mummy was wrong.  At Dragon is where the teasing really started, where Sherlock realized that having _friends_ wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Sherlock remembers coming home for Christmas holiday and telling Mummy how sad he was that everyone was so mean to him.  

“You’re just different, darling,” his mother says while sipping her tea.  “They’re just cruel because you’re so much smarter than they are, my sweet boy.”

“I am?”  Sherlock asks.

“Yes, sweetheart,” she says, grabbing his chin and kissing him roughly on the cheek.  “You’re smarter and better than they are.  Now come over here and let’s see if you can beat me at chess.”  

Sherlock remembers that was the first time he ever won against Mummy, feeling strangely confident and powerful from her insistence at his superiority.  Later that night, Sherlock barges into Mycroft’s room.  He’s reading a book on advanced nuclear physics and is highly annoyed Sherlock has disturbed him.  

“Mycroft, do you have any friends at Oxford?”  Sherlock asks as a way of announcing himself.  Mycroft throws a look of disdain at Sherlock over his shoulder.

“Friends?”  Mycroft laughs heartily, “Whatever would I need _friends_ for?”

“I don’t know, to have fun with and tell stories to.  Everyone has friends, right?”  

“No, Sherlock,” he says sharply.  “Now go away, I’m reading.”

“Mummy says I’m smarter than the other children,” Sherlock says, ignoring Mycroft’s order to leave and instead climbing up onto Mycroft’s four-poster and flopping down on his stomach.  “Mummy says that’s why they’re so mean to me.”  Mycroft closes his book and turns towards Sherlock with a tight smile on his face.  

“Mummy would be right,” he says through clenched teeth.  

“That I’m smarter?”  Sherlock says, perking up.

“Than other children?  I suppose,” Mycroft answers, rolling his eyes.  “Than _me_?”  He chuckles quietly at his rhetorical question.  Sherlock scrunches his face in annoyance.  

“I mean it!  Mummy said I’m smarter and better than all of them!”  He shouts, jumping up on his knees and punching Mycroft’s bed with his tiny fists.

“You are, Sherlock!”  Mycroft yells in frustration.

“But how do I get them to be my friends?”  Sherlock yells back.

“You don’t, Sherlock.  Who needs friends when you’ve got books and brains?  No one’s like us, they all _care_.”

“Care?  Care about what?”

“Anything,  everything,” he answers with another eye roll and hand flourish.  “Pick something.”

“We don’t care about anything?”  Sherlock asks, not understanding.  “But that’s not true.  I care about Mummy and Redbeard and you,” he remarks innocently.

Mycroft groans loudly, “God, Sherlock, do grow up immediately.  It will make my life so much easier,”  he croaks as he returns to his book.  

“What kinds of people don’t care about anything?”  Sherlock asks more to himself than Mycroft.

“Sociopaths,” Mycroft says offhandedly.  “Now get out of my room!” He roars.  Sherlock finally complies.

Immediately after Mycroft kicked him out of his room, Sherlock pulls Father’s dictionary out and looks up the word “sociopath.”  He reads:

 

_Sociopath_

_Syllabification: so·ci·o·path_

_Pronunciation: /ˈsōsēōˌpaTH_

_NOUN_

_A person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience._

 

Sherlock also looks up the words “antisocial” and “conscience” too.  He thinks he understands what Mycroft means now, saying they don’t care.  Sherlock shouldn’t care because he is better than other people, he does see what others don’t, even if Mycroft is better at observing than he is.  Sherlock has learned how to deduce and observe, he can learn how to not care too.  He’ll teach himself to act without remorse, to be cold and calculating.  If being superior means not having friends, than Sherlock supposes he just won’t have friends.  Who needs them when you’re smarter and better than everyone anyway?  

* * *

“That skull,” John says one night during a James Bond marathon.

“Hmm?” Sherlock says through a mouth full of chips.

“It looks real.”

“It is real,” Sherlock says flatly, not looking away from the screen.  

“Oh.  Did…” he squints at it, studying it quickly, “ _he_  have a name?”

Sherlock looks away to survey John.  

“Billy,” he says, turning back to look at it, the constant reminder looming large over Sherlock’s life.  

_This could be you._

* * *

Sherlock remembers Redbeard.  He remembers playing with him in the garden and how much he loved chasing sticks.  Redbeard also loved to be lazy and lay in the sun with Sherlock curled up next to him.  

He remembers playing Peter Pan with him.  Sherlock would pretend he was Hook and Redbeard was Smee, yelling at Redbeard to protect him from the nasty crocodile every time Mycroft would come outside to order him in for a bath before dinner.  

Sherlock also remembers the day they put him down.  He remembers he begged Mycroft to make Redbeard live forever.  Mycroft refused.  He told him, “Nothing lives forever, Sherlock, least of all your dog.  Caring is not an advantage, baby brother.”

Sherlock remembers that was the day he finally stopped caring.  He remembers that was the day he finally grew up.  He remembers it was the day he realized he would die one day too.

* * *

The first time Sherlock thinks about John is after the pool.  He remembers when he thought, for just a split second, that John had actually tricked him into thinking he was his friend.  Sherlock knows now he was foolish to ever think that, but still, it didn’t stop him in that moment.

_Please, this can’t be happening._

It was all he could think, which felt oddly to Sherlock like it was stretching out far longer than it actually was.  He tries to slow down and deduce what’s happening, but he’s too stunned and nervous to think properly, to see what needs to be seen.

_“Observe, don’t just look!_ ”  Mycroft shouts in Sherlock’s mind palace.  “ _Narrow it **down** , Sherlock_!”

But he just can’t think straight, it’s all coming out in a jumble.

_That coat, not his, he had porridge for breakfast today, he’s blinking too much, he left for that woman’s house, what’s her name?, is he scared?, can’t tell, Redbeard, Mummy, he wanted me to buy milk, can’t think, is he ok, not him._

_Please, no.  Not him…_

But John was John.  He was the same man Sherlock had grown to trust and admire and need.

Sherlock remembers the rush of emotions.  He was excited, shocked, angry, nervous.  He tries to keep calm, tries to keep his hand from shaking, tries to keep his voice even.  He doesn’t want to give away that he’s actually terrified, that he’s never felt more powerless.  Sherlock also remembers that it wasn’t him he was terrified for.  It was John.

Talking to Moriarty, Sherlock tries to pretend to seem uncaring and cavalier, like he can’t be bothered with Moriarty’s threats, or to even be pointing a gun at him.  He remembers Moriarty telling him he’d burn his heart out and retorting that he, in fact, did not have one.

“ _But we both know that’s not quite true,_ ” Sherlock remembers Moriarty cooing at him.  He remembers Moriarty narrowing his eyes at him.  He remembers thinking he should know what he means.

John doesn’t speak on the way home.  Sherlock wants to say something while they’re in the back of Lestrade’s car, but he doesn’t know what to say or where to start.  John had offered to die for him, offered to die with him.  How do you thank someone for that?  How do you tell them what that means to you?  How do you tell someone what _they_ mean to you?

Sherlock remembers John climbing the stairs two at a time and slamming the door to his room without so much as a grunt of acknowledgment.  Sherlock also remembers John didn’t come out for a day and a half.

Lestrade stays with Sherlock for a bit after dropping them off.  They both know why he does, but neither is willing to say it out loud.  At vulnerable times like this when horrible things have happened, Lestrade is worried beyond measure that Sherlock will start using again.  Back before John came into the picture, Mycroft would call Lestrade to sit with Sherlock and make sure he didn’t use.  He called them “danger nights.”  Lestrade has sat with Sherlock on more than two occasions, sometimes on Mycroft’s orders and sometimes not.  Sometimes even at Sherlock’s request.  The first few times, Sherlock would behave like a child.  He’d throw tantrums and scream how he didn’t need a babysitter, and Lestrade would always find a spare kit in one or more of Sherlock’s hiding places.  But each time the yelling would get quieter, the crying would get less frequent, and eventually the tantrums stop, and Lestrade doesn’t find anymore kits or needles or cocaine in Sherlock’s flat.  He barely even finds so much as paracetamol in his medicine cabinet.  

It’s been a couple of years since Lestrade has had to stay with Sherlock for a full night.  Lestrade always tells Mycroft that he does stay through the night, even if he only stays for an hour.  Lestrade suspects Mycroft knows he’s lying to him because he’s seen how he can control the CCTV’s.  He’s also seen Mycroft around Sherlock and he’s pretty sure he’s smarter than his younger brother, and if Lestrade thought Sherlock was a genius, then what does that make Mycroft?   But Mycroft never so much as bats an eye at the senior detective.  

Lestrade tells Sherlock he doesn’t stay because he trusts him and that he knows Sherlock won’t break that trust.  It’s this that makes Sherlock stay off the drugs.  Lestrade is the first person to trust Sherlock implicitly, even after he knew what Sherlock got up to behind closed doors.  Secretly, Sherlock is thankful Lestrade stays with him, even if only for a little while.  He doesn’t want to break his promise.

After Lestrade leaves, Sherlock climbs into bed and tries to sleep.  But the adrenaline starts pumping every time he closes his eyes and all he sees is Moriarty’s smiling face.  He lies in bed and stares wide eyed at the ceiling, knowing John is right above him probably doing the same thing.  Sherlock’s heart is pounding and it’s making a deafening sound in his ears.

 

_ba boom, Ba Boom, BA BOOM_

He keeps replaying what happened over and over and over again.  How hurt he’d been at the thought that John had really been Moriarty all along, how relieved he’d been when it turned out he wasn’t, how scared he’d been thinking John was moments away from being killed, how guilty he felt that he’d rather John be strapped to bombs than have been the man who was after him.

Without realizing it, Sherlock’s hand drifts under the covers.  He closes his eyes as he grips himself tight.  He hasn’t had to do this in a while, but now that he’s started he can’t convince himself to stop.

 

_The adrenaline_ , he reasons in his head, _chemicals…_

 

Sherlock goes to his mind palace where all his knowledge of chemistry is.  Chemicals and pheromones; dopamine and serotonin and testosterone and anything else he can think of to keep himself as rational as possible during this completely base act.

But then John walks into his mind palace and Sherlock starts to pump harder.  It’s all the little things he thinks about him that makes John John.  John reading the newspaper in his robe, John laughing at crap telly with him at ridiculously late hours, John stumbling over Sherlock’s kitchen experiments because he just can’t get used to the beakers and burners laying about, John fussing over Sherlock because he hasn’t eaten in 36 hours.   John’s hand brushing Sherlock’s during dinner.  The way John’s voice sounds all fuzzy when he’s just woken up.  The way John looks at him when he’s making deductions.

Sherlock pumps harder and faster and clenches his eyes closed even tighter.  He moans loudly as he comes and his eyes flutter open towards the ceiling.  He stays like that, feeling empty and alone, and doesn’t know when he finally falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to update, lovelies. Life gets in the way sometimes, but thank you for reading! Be back with chapter 4 soon! XX K


	4. Danger Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So when Lestrade starts to notice signs in Sherlock that something is wrong, he tries his best to reason his fears away. Sherlock has always been irritable, but lately, Lestrade is noticing even more irritation out of him. He has horrible bags under his eyes, but maybe he’s just having more trouble than usual sleeping. And yeah, Sherlock always speaks quickly. But sometimes you can’t even understand what he’s saying at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, as implied by the title, is all about Sherlock's drug addiction. So please read with caution if you have any drug addiction triggers or are working through an addiction yourself. And if you are struggling through an addiction of any kind, remember that you are so brave and so worthy of life and happiness -- and I believe in you. <3

In between cases, Sherlock relaxes, though he’ll never admit it.  Sherlock genuinely only feels alive when he’s working and trying to find the pieces to his puzzles, but even geniuses need to stop and breathe once in awhile.  When he’s working, it’s like his brain doesn’t switch off.   Sherlock will only sleep for an hour or two at a time.  He’ll only eat every other day and even then it’s only half a meal.  He skims the newspapers, but doesn’t really read them.

Sometimes when Sherlock is working on a case, he’ll drink six cups of coffee a day.  John says it makes him too hyper and it’ll give him ulcers, but since he’s stopped smoking, Sherlock yells at John that he needs it.

Sherlock remembers, years before he met John, when he used to inject cocaine when he worked on a case.

“ _Stimulates my brain_ ,” he’d reason with himself right before pushing the needle in.  Sherlock would never admit out loud it was partly because he just liked the way it made him feel.

“I can stop anytime I want!”  Sherlock once yelled at Mycroft when he caught him preparing his next injection.  He remembers the way Mycroft looked at him, like Sherlock was something he didn’t know anymore.  He remembers that was the day their feud started.

But Sherlock doesn’t do cocaine anymore.  He remembers he made a promise to Lestrade, of all people.   

 

* * *

 

“Hey...you all right?”  
  
“I’m fine.”

“Well I just thought maybe…”  
  
Sherlock studies John as he stands in the corridor of their flat, anxious and afraid.  

“What?”  Sherlock snaps at him.  “Spit it out.”

“I just thought you might want some company.  Hard blow and all….” he trails off again, his hand creeping slowly into the hairs in the back of his head.  Sherlock focuses on the movement for a moment too long.  

“Come on, Sherlock.  Into the sitting room, I’ll pour you a drink.”

“No,” he states sharply.  He doesn’t move from the landing of the stairs.  John throws him a sympathetic look and opens his mouth to coax him into the flat.  

“My brother called you, didn’t he?  From the morgue, yeah?  Did he at least wait til I was out of eyesight or was he phoning you when I was still in the corridor?”  

“Sherlock, just come up here and we’ll talk.  I’ll get the good scotch.  The fire’s still going too.”

“NO!”  Sherlock shouts like a petulant child.  John turns around stunned.  He’s heard Sherlock yell before, but never like this, never like a toddler who’s about to throw a tantrum.

“What did Mycroft say to you.”  It’s not a question.

John sighs, resigning himself to telling the truth.  “He told me to stay up with you.  You took his cigarette and he said that meant I had to stay with you all night.”

Sherlock crunches his nose between his gloved fingers and laughs mirthlessly.  John stands rigid, not knowing what to expect.  

“Go to sleep, John.  I don’t need you to babysit me because I smoked a fag,” Sherlock says cavalierly as he tries moving past John to go to his room.  John blocks him with his arm. 

“Sherlock, it’s Christmas, and she’s….” John whispers but trails off when he catches Sherlock’s gaze.  

“Let me by, John,” Sherlock says in a too-quiet voice.  John can feel the ice freeze in Sherlock’s words.  He gives him a pitying look.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”  John still hasn’t moved his arm.  

“Not you,” Sherlock shudders suddenly.  “Not you too.  You’re not supposed to be like the rest of them,” he says, hanging his head.  

John concentrates on Sherlock, sensing his vulnerability, and is taken back to his time in the army.  He’s seen this so many times.  Too many times.  John lowers his arm finally.

“Just sit with me for an hour.  Have one drink.  And then I’ll let you sit in your room all by yourself if you still want to.”

Sherlock softens.  He needs to realize already that he can trust John.  He trusts John.

 

* * *

 

Lestrade first met Sherlock five years ago when he brought him a case shortly after being made detective inspector.  Sherlock had seen the body of a woman who’d apparently committed suicide, according to the coroner.  But Sherlock wasn’t buying it.  He investigated as much as he could until he was satisfied he knew what actually happened: the woman’s younger brother had killed her in order to be the sole claimant to their mother’s fortune.

Sherlock remembers taking his findings to every homicide detective at Scotland Yard and everyone laughing him out of their offices.  Everyone except Detective Inspector Lestrade, the unit’s newest DI.  There had been something about Sherlock that Lestrade found genuine, and so he took the younger man at his word.  Lestrade reopened the investigation into the woman’s death and discovered Sherlock had been right about everything.

After that, Lestrade always called on Sherlock when a case proved too difficult or strange.  He also referred people in need of a private detective to Sherlock.  Both men won: Sherlock, not wanting it in the first place, let Lestrade take credit for all the crimes he solved, and Sherlock could support himself with the extra wages he earned from his referred clients.  They kept on like that for months, and even though some people on Lestrade’s team found Sherlock to be supremely annoying, Lestrade grew accustomed to having Sherlock around.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers the one time he almost relapsed.  The time Moriarty came to the flat and sat in his chair.  The time he told him about fairy tales and heroes and villains.  The time he told Sherlock he owed him a fall.  He didn’t get it at the time.  

He didn’t observe.  

 

* * *

 

So when Lestrade starts to notice signs in Sherlock that something is wrong, he tries his best to reason his fears away.  Sherlock has always been irritable, but lately, Lestrade is noticing even more irritation out of him.  He has horrible bags under his eyes, but maybe he’s just having more trouble than usual sleeping.  And yeah, Sherlock always speaks quickly.  But sometimes you can’t even understand what he’s saying at all.

But then Lestrade starts noticing other things, like Sherlock’s nose bleeds often or his eyes seem bloodshot or that he can’t stand still at crime scenes or he’s constantly fidgeting in the car.

Lestrade realizes he’s actually fond of the younger man, so he just keeps telling himself its stress.  It isn’t….  It can’t be….

It has to be something personal that Sherlock isn’t telling him.  He’ll tell him when he feels like telling him.  He’ll tell him….

But then Sherlock shows up to a crime scene one day with his pupils blown wide and his clothes barely buttoned properly, looking around the room like any second someone’s going to come out of the shadows and stab him.

Lestrade is furious, both with Sherlock and himself.  If he’d just said something sooner, this wouldn’t be happening.  If Sherlock had never started taking the drugs in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened at all.

Lestrade wants to scream at Sherlock, wants to punch him and tell him he hates him, wants to arrest him right here and now and embarrass him by making his important brother have to come down to the station to get him out.  But he knows none of this will do anything but push Sherlock farther down into his addiction.  Lestrade knows he’ll have to threaten Sherlock with the loss of the one thing he cares about.  He hates to do it, but he knows it’ll be the only way to get any results.

Sherlock remembers Lestrade pulling him into a room with a somber, broken expression on his face.

“Sherlock,” he hesitates.  Lestrade doesn’t know how to begin, so he just blurts out his question.  “How long have you been doing it?”

“Doing what?”  Sherlock snaps at him.  He’s playing dumb, of course.  He’s clever, he reads people’s faces and body language for a living.  He knows exactly what Lestrade means.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Sherlock!   You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Lestrade tries to keep his voice calm, but he’s not being very convincing.

Sherlock blinks at him defiantly, like a teenager who’s being confronted by their parent after they’ve done something terrible.

“Well, Sherlock!?  Speed, coke, what!?”  Lestrade knows getting angry at Sherlock won’t do any good and he instantly regrets raising his voice at him.

Sherlock continues to blink and stare angrily at the older man in silence.

“I’m not stupid, I -- ”

“Could have fooled me,” Sherlock cuts him off.  Anything to provoke Lestrade into leaving this alone.  But Lestrade knows now, knows that the way to get through to him isn’t by screaming at him.

“I’m a police officer, Sherlock.  I can tell when someone’s taking drugs,” Lestrade says evenly.

“So what if I am!?  What’s it matter to you!?”  Sherlock spits.  He doesn’t like being pushed into a corner.  He doesn’t like being judged.

At this, Lestrade’s face softens completely and Sherlock doesn’t know what to think.

“You can’t keep doing this.  You can’t.  I won’t allow it,” Lestrade tells him.

“Oh, you won’t allow it?”  Sherlock sneers.  “Who do you think you are, Mycroft?”

“No, I’m a Detective Inspector for New Scotland Yard.  And as long as you’re taking drugs, I can’t let you consult,” Lestrade says matter of factly.  “I _won’t_ let you.”

At this, Sherlock’s face screws  up in anger and he starts saying whatever he can to cause Lestrade the most pain.

“You think _I_ need _you_!?  You’re a fucking moron!  Your whole team is!  You’d be nowhere without me!”

Sherlock continues with the empty insults for a couple more minutes.  Lestrade remains silent throughout Sherlock’s tantrum, his face drenched, not in anger, but concern, and it only makes Sherlock more furious.

“You think your conviction rate will stay anywhere near what it is now without me _handing_ you guilty verdicts!?  You’re _nothing_ without me!”  He howls in Lestrade’s face.  “ **Nothing**!”

Finally, Sherlock stops screaming long enough to catch his breath.

“Well?  Don’t have anything to say now, _Detective Inspector_!?”  Sherlock sneers, spitting in Lestrade's face. 

Just like Sherlock was before, Lestrade is now silent, waiting for Sherlock to do or say something of actual value.  The two stare at each other for a long second before Sherlock turns on his heels towards the door.

“Why, Sherlock?”  Lestrade asks in a small voice.

Sherlock stops but doesn’t turn around.

Lestrade shakes his head and says, “It doesn’t matter why you started, it just matters that you stop.”

Sherlock’s back is still turned.

“I’ll help you, Sherlock.  But until you stop, I can’t let you consult.”

Sherlock’s knuckles turn white as he grips the door handle hard, wanting desperately to be anywhere but where he is, but oddly unable to actually force his body to run out of the room.  He stands rooted to the spot, struggling as whether to stay, run, or turn around and physically attack Lestrade.  They’re all crossing his mind, they all seem like viable options.  Even high, Sherlock is sure he can take Lestrade in a fight.  He’s a skilled boxer and the only training Lestrade does at the gym is running.  Sherlock would definitely win if he started a fight.  But Sherlock waits too long to decide and before he can properly react, Lestrade gently grabs Sherlock’s wrist, and Sherlock lets him.

“Look at me,”  Lestrade coaxes.  He doesn’t want to,  doesn’t want to see the concern and caring in Lestrade’s face.  He just wants that needle back in his arm.

“Sherlock,” Lestrade whispers tenderly.

Sherlock lets out a shaky breath and feels the tears well in his eyes.

“I only started because it helped me think,” Sherlock whispers shakily, surprising even himself with divulging this secret.  “So much goes on and I can’t filter it out and it just helped me focus on…” Sherlock trails off and lowers his head.  It’ll take him a long time to realize that he can’t filter things out _because_ of the cocaine, not in spite of it.

“It’s ok,” Lestrade reassures him.  “It’s gonna be ok.”

“But now she’s gone.  She’s gone, she left me…”  And Sherlock starts to cry.  It’s the first time he’s cried since he was a child.

Lestrade forcibly turns Sherlock so that he’s facing him and Sherlock doesn’t fight it.  He places both hands on his shoulders and let’s Sherlock cry into his hands.  

“Sherlock, you’re not alone.  I’ll help you.”  Sherlock finally looks up at him uncertainly.

“I don’t know if I can,” he says, sounding smaller than he ever has before.

“You can.  And I’m here.  But Sherlock,” Lestrade starts, “you can’t keep taking the drugs.  You just can’t.  It’s destroying you.”

“How…how do I…”  He doesn’t like being this vulnerable.  He feels weak and powerless.  He just wants to run and never look back.  It’s only a matter of time before Lestrade turns into all the rest of them with their “weirdos” and “freaks” and “piss offs.”  It’s only a matter of time.

“Sherlock, I will help you,” Lestrade says, emphasizing every word.  “Just promise me you’ll stop.  And I will help you.”

Sherlock knows he needs to stop.  He hasn’t slept in days, his nose bleeds constantly, his heart is starting to beat erratically, and he can’t keep food down.  But the withdrawal scares him more than anything and he knows he can’t do it alone, now that Samantha’s left him.  But alone is all he has.  Alone is what he is.

Almost like Lestrade can see inside his mind, he says, “You’re not alone.  Just promise me.  Please.”

Lestrade bends down to look into his downcast eyes.  “I believe in you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock blinks at him several times incredulously.  No one’s ever had such faith in him before.  No one’s ever _believed_ in him.  Sherlock can’t form any words, so he just nods.  

And so Sherlock doesn’t take drugs anymore.  At least he tries not to.  Now he drinks six cups of coffee a day and wears three nicotine patches at a time and relishes secondhand smoke and tries not to think about that rush of sunshine shooting up his arm and down into his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay in this chapter, my friends. I was in the process of moving from The States to London and I wasn't managing my time as well as I should have been. So if you've stuck around for this long, thank you so much and know I appreciate you! Chapter 5 will be done soon! 
> 
> As always, R&R -- it pleases the Universe, and me too! XX K


	5. Mind and Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two opposites warring for Sherlock’s undivided attention. John is warm and familiar and dependable; Irene is cold and adventurous and devious. She’s nothing like how John is and he wants it. Sherlock wants to live on the edge of self-destruction because it’s not boring, it’s not predictable, it’s not what the rest of the mouth breathers do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone still following this, my sincerest apologies on neglecting this story. What with moving to London and starting postgrad school, things have been hectic and life has been happening and I'm afraid my hobbies have taken a backseat to my research. I do promise to try to be more on top of things though. Thanks for sticking around, you're super cool.

Sherlock remembers going to Buckingham Palace in only his bed sheet.  He remembers being embarrassed that John could tell he wasn’t wearing pants, but tries his hardest to hide it.  Instead, Sherlock focuses on embarrassing Mycroft as much as he can in front of his royal official friend.

Sherlock also remembers Mycroft nearly disrobing him and trying to catch the sheet as quickly as he can because John is looking.  Then Sherlock has to weigh his options: does he want to embarrass Mycroft more or does he want John to see him naked less?

He chooses the latter.

Sherlock remembers acting cavalier in the cab and flipping the Royal Ashtray in his hands for John.  He likes that John wonders when he had the chance to lift it and how he could have ever done such a thing.  Sherlock wants to keep John aloof because he likes the way his smile looks when he is, so he doesn’t tell him that he lifted it when he was changing  into this suit.  Wasn’t that hard, really.

Later that day, Sherlock meets Irene Adler face to face and finds he’s somewhat smitten with the woman.  She’s intelligent, charming, cunning, bold, beautiful.  Irene is a new puzzle for him to try to solve, a new adventure for him to go on.  Best of all, she was able to outsmart him and Sherlock finds he doesn’t really mind.

A couple of days later, when the effects of whatever drug it was she slammed into him wears off, Sherlock thinks about Irene as he’s pretending to sleep.  He thinks about her body and tries not to let his hand drift down under the covers.  But then John enters his mind abruptly, just like he did when meeting Irene.  Sherlock tries to will John out of the room because Irene is naked and straddling him and he’s stroking himself in earnest.  But suddenly Irene’s across the room and it’s John who’s sitting on the couch next to him.  Irene is mumbling something to him about being a good boy and letting John do all the work and how she wants to watch.

Sherlock nods at Irene and turns his head and sees it’s John’s hand on him.  He closes his eyes and imagines John kissing him softly.  Then Irene yanks his head away from him and roughly devours Sherlock’s lips.  She’s kissing him harshly and it’s all teeth and tongues and lips.  He can barely breathe and she’s in total control and Sherlock can’t quite decide what’s making him more excited: John’s hand or Irene’s mouth.

Two opposites warring for Sherlock’s undivided attention.  John is warm and familiar and dependable; Irene is cold and adventurous and devious.  She’s nothing like how John is and he wants it.   Sherlock wants to live on the edge of self-destruction because it’s not boring, it’s not predictable, it’s not what the rest of the mouth breathers do.

But still, Sherlock pulls away from Irene and finds John’s eyes.  John leans forward and kisses Sherlock passionately but it’s nothing like how Irene just did.  John is gentle with him and doesn’t try to smother him with his face on top of his.  Where Irene is physical, John is emotional -- his mind and his heart, constantly at war.  He wants Sherlock to feel what’s behind this, he wants him to know exactly how he feels about him from this one kiss.  Sherlock pulls away and stares into John’s eyes as he continues to stroke him.  John is what’s good in the world.  John is what’s good _about_ the world.  John is good and safe and doesn’t call him freak or hate him because he sees what others don’t.  John accepts him and supports him and loves him.  John loves him.

Sherlock groans loudly as he finishes.  He sees stars and clasps his free hand over his mouth so that John won’t come running in thinking he’s in trouble.  He stares at the ceiling, trying not to think about what just happened in his mind palace.  He stays like that until his eyes get too heavy and he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers the first time he sees John’s scar.  Mrs Hudson likes to keep the windows open in the summer and the flat is a little overheated.  Sherlock is in the kitchen working on an experiment about blood stains when John leaves the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist.  For John, there’s nothing strange in this.  As a doctor, nudity doesn’t bother him; he’s trained in looking at the human body.  Likewise, as a soldier, the men in the barracks never cared too much about covering up.  Modesty never seemed like the most important thing on the menu when that menu included things like bullets, shrapnel, and bombs flying around in their general vicinity.  For John, walking around in a towel is polite.  

After his shower, John walks into the kitchen to make himself some toast for breakfast.  At first, Sherlock doesn’t notice him because he’s working and he’s got more important things to think about.  While he’s waiting, John leans against the kitchen counter and bites into an apple.

“What ya workin’ on today?”  John asks, trying to sound interested.  He's actually really not interested in Sherlock's experiment though, he's just trying to be friendly.  At this point, John doesn’t fully understand that Sherlock likes being left alone when he’s working.  John doesn’t fully understand that people don’t always need to be talking to one another.  John doesn’t understand that it’s irrelevant to discuss what he’s working on, it’s only relevant to discuss the results.

“Okay…” John says dejectedly and turns around.  He still doesn’t understand that Sherlock’s not ignoring him to be rude; it’s just that he doesn’t want to miss anything.

Sherlock sighs.  He doesn’t want to push John away so he turns around from his microscope.  John is buttering his toast and fiddling with the kettle to make his morning tea and doesn’t realize that Sherlock is looking at him.  Sherlock’s eyes immediately go up to John’s shoulder.  

The scar itself is tiny but it’s such a huge part of who John is now.  Sherlock stares at it and wonders what it was like, wonders what it sounded like and smelled like.  John’s skin is warped around the hole.  The scar tissue is rough and raised and Sherlock desperately wants to touch it to see what it feels like.  Will it feel hollow?  Will it hurt him?  How smooth is it?

Then John turns around and catches Sherlock staring.  But Sherlock doesn’t look away.  The back of John’s shoulder looks like a thing of beauty when compared to the front.  The front of his shoulder is where the bullet entered, where it tore through ligaments and shattered bone.  The scar is an ugly red color and Sherlock can just make out the tiny holes from where the stitches went in to sew John back together again.

Sherlock can’t tell, but John wants to run away.  He knows what Sherlock’s looking at, knows that he’s studying it and deducing his wound on the spot.  John tolerates it most times, but right now he can’t stand being Sherlock’s test subject.  He feels like a caged monkey being studied by scientists.  It’s one of those times when John wishes Sherlock would speak his thoughts instead of internalizing them.  He wishes Sherlock wouldn’t internalize what he thinks of him.

“You know, if you want to know about my scar, you just have to ask.  So stop staring at me,” John huffs as he walks out of the kitchen.

Finally, Sherlock speaks up.  “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore,” John calls from the stairs.  He doesn’t come back down until he needs to leave for the surgery.  He never finishes his toast or tea.

 

* * *

 

Secretly, John’s scar is one of the things Sherlock likes most about him.  It’s one of the things that makes John unboring.  He’s so quiet and agreeable on the outside, but on the inside, John is a soldier.  Literally, a soldier.  Sherlock finds this juxtaposition fascinating and it’s what makes him want to know the inner workings of John’s mind.

Secretly, Sherlock loves that John was shot.  Secretly, he’s thankful for it.  Secretly, Sherlock tells himself that it’s what brought John to him.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been a long time since he’s thought about John.  He won’t let himself.  They work more cases and Sherlock gets to know John better and better.

Like, John’s started working out so he can keep up with Sherlock when he starts running all over the city.

Like, if John can, he likes taking showers in the afternoon after he’s fully awake.

Like, the food John eats most often is beans, though he doesn’t love them.

“I still eat like I’m a soldier,” John tells him one evening when Sherlock eyes him.

Like, John tries not to bring his girlfriends home to stay overnight.

“I’d love not to see Mrs Hudson’s face the morning after.”

Sherlock peers over the microscope at him.  “It’s not as though Mrs Hudson doesn’t know what sex is,” Sherlock states.

“Yeah, but she’s our landlady and it’d just be we – oh, forget it,” John scoffs when he realizes Sherlock really isn’t listening.  He stomps out of the kitchen but is back a moment later.  “It’s not like you ever bring anybody home, so what makes you the expert?”

Sherlock doesn’t look up from his microscope.  He’s examining a dish of blood and doesn’t want to miss the reaction it has to potassium chlorate.

“Well?”  John persists.

Sherlock sighs behind the microscope because John is annoying him with his annoying conversation about annoying things.  But he can feel John staring at him; he knows John’s not leaving it alone.

“’Well’ what?”  Sherlock drawls.

“You don’t ever bring anybody home.  And don’t say –“

“Not my area,” Sherlock says in unison with John.

John sighs sharply and knows he won’t be getting an answer out of Sherlock any time soon.

“Right,” he says, patting his jacket to make sure he’s got his wallet, keys, and mobile.  He turns out of the kitchen and yells as he’s walking down the stairs, “I won’t be in for tea tonight!”

Later that night, Sherlock drinks his chamomile tea and watches crap telly alone and wonders what John’s doing.   He wonders about the woman he’s with, what she looks like and how she sounds.  He wonders if John really does like her or if he just wants a shag.

Sherlock’s lived with John long enough now to know when he is or isn’t having sex regularly.  When John is having sex regularly, he’s pleasant in the mornings.  He drinks his tea and reads the paper and doesn’t even grumble when Sherlock tells him he’s wasting his time and that there’s nothing interesting in there.  He also lets Sherlock talk at him incessantly in order to get his deductions right or his experiments working correctly.  He’ll even allow him to store small body parts in the fridge as long as they’re away from the food and properly contained.

But when he isn’t having sex regularly, John tends to snap at Sherlock when he needs someone to talk at.  He’s not as nice in the mornings and won’t make another piece of toast for Sherlock.  He also argues with him about pointless things.   Pointless things like why Sherlock doesn’t bring anybody home.  He knows why John’s doing it; it bothers him that he can’t tell if Sherlock is gay or straight.  John likes to categorize people: man, woman; old, young; fat, thin.  These things, Sherlock doesn’t care about.  He just likes to read the stories  painted on people’s faces and share the secrets they try so hard to keep hidden.

Sherlock scoffs at the thought and focuses his attention back on the telly.  A minute later, he hears the front door open and muffled laughter.  He turns his head instinctually towards the stairwell as he realizes it was a woman’s laugh.

Someone knocks into the wall and they both laugh louder.  John shushes them, but they don’t really quiet down.  Sherlock can tell by the sound of John’s laughter that he’s had a few too many pints down the pub.  He hears the two of them start kissing and freezes.

John and his date stop at the landing and John pushes her back into the wall. She squeals her surprise and Sherlock can hear that John is smiling against her mouth in his laugh.  Sherlock watches with perverse fascination as John kisses her roughly.  He’s got one hand on her hip and the other supporting his weight against the wall.  He moves down to her neck and she sighs contentedly.  Her hands are in his hair and on his back, feeling everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  John moves to nuzzling and kissing her neck and her eyes flutter open and land squarely on Sherlock.  She stares at him for a long moment and Sherlock stares blankly back at her.

“Why don’t we move to the bedroom,” the woman suggests in a breathy voice.  John plants another kiss on her lips, this time more passionately, before he takes her hand and turns around.

Sherlock looks away but not before he catches John’s eyes for a second.  John’s eyes are black orbs.  His lips are swollen and his hair is a mess.  John doesn’t say anything and neither does Sherlock.  He just stares at the television and pretends to pay attention.  Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock can see John hesitate for a fraction of a second before he leads the woman upstairs.

Sherlock desperately tries to pay attention to the programme and ignore what John’s doing right now.  But all he can hear is that woman’s exaggerated moaning because she knows Sherlock is listening and it’s driving him crazy.  It’s been a long time since Sherlock has had sex.  Everyone assumes he’s a virgin because he just doesn’t give a shit about who’s sleeping with whom, but he isn’t.  He just can’t find anyone who doesn’t annoy him or bore him.  He just can’t find anyone he likes or trusts enough.  He doesn’t care because he’s married to his work, but its times like this that Sherlock thinks it would be nice to have someone to get off with.

Sherlock’s mind wanders to David and Samantha.  He can remember exactly how their hands felt on his body, how their mouths felt on his.  Tonight’s no exception, except its John’s hands replacing theirs.  It’s John’s mouth he’s thinking about, and it bothers him why he just can’t figure out why.  

_Why John?  Why now, after all these years spent alone?  Why?_

Sherlock pretends to watch telly for a little while longer as the pressure in his trousers gets heavier.  But then he hears John moan and he can’t take it anymore.  He goes to his room and doesn’t even try to push John out of his mind palace.  He imagines its John’s hand on him, warm and strong, pumping up and down.  John’s lips kissing him, slow and gentle at first and then rough and passionate, a gnashing of teeth and tongues.  He hears John moaning and Sherlock imagines pinning John to the bed and making him moan into his mouth.  He imagines trailing wet kisses down John’s body and continues to stroke himself, now with more vigor and urgency.

John’s moans become more hurried and suddenly, in Sherlock’s mind palace, John flips him over and tells Sherlock not to move.  He stares as John works slowly down the length of his body and it’s torturing him because he just wants John to make him come already.

John’s moaning loudly and the pounding from the bed hitting the wall is coming in an arrhythmic rush and Sherlock imagines it’s him up there with John.  Sherlock imagines John wrapping that perfect, hot mouth around his rock hard prick and he comes hard right before he hears John do the same upstairs.

Sherlock can hear John and the woman laugh for a moment and then silence.  He stares up at the ceiling and tries not to feel guilty.  He stares up at the ceiling and tries to will away that empty feeling that’s burrowing into his chest like a dog digging for his bone.  Thirty minutes later, Sherlock hears two sets of footsteps going down the stairs and a minute later, John’s footsteps coming back up.  Sherlock wants to think that John wouldn’t let the woman stay overnight, but he knows it was her that elected to leave.

Sherlock doesn’t know when he falls asleep and he doesn’t wake up until he hears John running the shower.  He stays in his room until he’s certain John’s left for the surgery.  He just doesn’t think he can face him.

 

* * *

 

After that, Sherlock thinks about John with reckless abandon.

 

In the shower after he wakes up.

After his third cup of coffee.

During that rerun episode of _Jeremy Kyle_ where the man _swears_ he’s not the girl’s father.

In the middle of an experiment on variants of dirt.

 

John is consuming him.      
  
---  
  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R&R please -- the Universe will reward you with good karma and lots of presents at Christmas! XX K


	6. Classical Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock goes into the room marked JOHN HAMISH WATSON, 10 MARCH 1975 and starts to catalogue and index the entire terrain of John’s face so that he can go back to this every time he filters conversation or is bored or is having his second cup of coffee or is laying in bed and can’t sleep. He memorizes this so he can remember a time when John was peaceful and safe in his hands and even sighed at the feeling of Sherlock wrapped around him and leaned into it because he couldn’t get enough of it. John can never return Sherlock’s feelings so this will have to do, an elaborate lie of a memory where John is cognizant of what information his body is feeding to Sherlock and fully aware that Sherlock is in love with him and not only ok with it but encourages it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A preface: in America, a single room means there's one bed. So in HoB when the innkeeper says he's sorry for not being able to do a double room for Sherlock and John, I thought he was saying they didn't have any rooms with two beds in them, not that they couldn't do a room with one double sized bed. So, before I realised it, I wrote Dartmoor scenes under the impression that John and Sherlock were sleeping in one bed. I liked it and, gotta admit, was feeling lazy and didn't wanna change it. So just a touch of behind the scenes canon divergence here. Also, I gave Sherlock my favourite music and band because I sincerely do head canon it. : ] 
> 
> Here are a couple playlists I made because I make playlists, that's just what I do.
> 
>  
> 
> NIN: Sherlock
> 
>  
> 
> [The Chemicals Between: Memento Inspired 8tracks Playlist](http://8tracks.com/katestrophic/the-chemicals-between)

In Dartmoor, the air is too clean and there’s too much grass.  Trees replace the buildings and billboards and there are no taxis anywhere.  God, there’s not even a subway system.  Sherlock has to remind himself several times that this case with the charming, yet deranged young man and his gigantic hound is at least an eight and a half.  That, and he knows how to drive a car.  Though John’s constant complaining at how awful a driver Sherlock is is really starting to annoy him.

To make matters worse, the inn they’re staying at couldn’t do them a double room.  The idea of staying in a single room with John leaves Sherlock feeling…what is it?  Anxious?  Insecure?  Worried?  Excited?  Is there a word that conveys all of those emotions together?  If there is, Sherlock can’t think of it right now.  His mind is working too fast, what with the prospect of having to sleep in the same bed as John and also trying to gather as much information as he can about Henry’s hound.  Sherlock desperately wants a cigarette, maybe even two.  Possibly the whole pack, he can’t quite decide.  He’s just trying to remain calm and push his feelings about John out of his head.  They’re just not rational and they don’t belong there.

So instead he focuses on data collection and figuring out who to interview and who’s just a nutter and how easy would it be to break into Baskerville and on a scale of one to ten, just how imbalanced is Henry Knight really?  He analyses and deduces outside the inn, wind speeds and temperatures and precipitation probabilities; _tourist, tourist, local, tourist_ ; what’s John talking about to the innkeeper about, what’s taking so long with his beer, why isn’t he out here, I want him to come out here.   
  
_Stop, this is childish,_ Mycroft says in his mind palace.

 _No, it’s not, I’m deducing, how is that childish?_  Sherlock responds.

 _You can’t lie to me, Sherlock, least of all in here,_ Mycroft says, rounding on him.   _What do we say about caring and sentiment, little brother?_

Sherlock resigns and says, _Not an advantage._

 _So stop this ridiculous nonsense now and solve the case.  Pining after your dull flatmate won’t help you figure out what this hound really is any faster._  

Sherlock shakes himself free of Mycroft’s hold because even in his own head he’s never far from his reach.  He turns back to look at John still talking to the innkeeper and knows what he has to do.  He goes into the room marked SENTIMENT and shoves all his ridiculous nonsense thoughts about John in there and slams it shut.  

“Mind if I sit here?”  He asks Fletcher, the demon hound from hell tour guide.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers one time he couldn’t help himself.  He walks into the kitchen to make himself some eggs for breakfast and sees John has fallen asleep in his chair in the living room.  Sherlock knows he slept terribly the night before.  He heard John start awake and then clamber downstairs to make himself a cup of chamomile tea hoping it would calm his nerves.  Obviously, it didn’t work as well as John would have liked.  Sherlock walks in front of him hoping the noise will wake John, but it doesn’t.  He knows John will be tense and sore all day from having slept like that and that it’s best to just wake him up now instead of letting him sit there any longer.  

But Sherlock stops.  He finds he can’t do it, raise John from this peaceful state.  He knows that John’s been having nightmares even though he hasn’t told him.  Sherlock can hear him talking in his sleep sometimes.  He can never make out the words, but Sherlock is positive it has something to do with Moriarty and being strapped to bombs.  Sometimes when John knows Sherlock isn’t sleeping that night, he won’t come downstairs after he’s had a nightmare.  He just doesn’t want to talk to Sherlock, even though Sherlock doesn’t insist that John ever talk about anything.

Sherlock stands in front of the chair.  John’s snoring lightly because of the way his head is resting on the back of it.  He bends down and just stares at him.  He looks so peaceful and Sherlock wishes he could feel that sort of freedom.  And then, without thinking, Sherlock reaches out to touch John’s face.  Lightly, but not light enough that it startles him awake.  He wants to keep John like this forever.  He traces around the edges of John’s face, first around his forehead and jaw, and then around his eyes and mouth.  Sherlock does this for a few minutes, tracing back and forth, feeling the way John’s skin feels soft around his mouth but rough around his hairline and it’s then that Sherlock remembers that someone used to do this when he was little.

Sherlock closes his eyes and remembers that Mycroft used to come into his room when he’d have bad dreams and trace the outlines of his face.  He remembers when he was little that he wanted to be a pirate because pirates are dangerous and funny and that meddling little Peter Pan will get what’s coming to him.  He wants to be like Captain Hook and go on adventures and have everyone answer to him.  But secretly, Captain Hook scares him and he thinks the crocodile is right in wanting to eat him.  Secretly, Sherlock wants to be with Peter and Wendy and Tiger Lily.  He wants to fit in, but he knows, even as a child, that he doesn’t.

Sherlock kneels in front of John and takes all of him in.  All his beauty, all his vulnerability, all his humanity.  He kneels in front of John and marvels at all the things John represents to him: compassion, acceptance, patience, adoration.  Love.

He traces the outlines of John’s face and tries to memorize everything, every change in texture, every teenage scar, every wrinkle around his eyes and mouth that shows how much laughter and happiness John has let into his life.  And he can’t help himself.  Sherlock cups John’s cheek and runs his thumb back and forth along his cheekbone.  John stirs for a moment and Sherlock worries he’s woken him and what he’d say to explain what exactly he’s doing.  But all John does is lean into Sherlock’s hand and sighs contentedly.  Sherlock looks wide eyed at him, not sure how to take this until he decides that all he wants to do is savor this moment, to feel John safe and living and breathing under his touch.  
  
Sherlock goes into the room marked JOHN HAMISH WATSON, 10 MARCH 1975 and starts to catalogue and index the entire terrain of John’s face so that he can go back to this every time he filters conversation or is bored or is having his second cup of coffee or is laying in bed and can’t sleep.  He memorizes this so he can remember a time when John was peaceful and safe in his hands and even sighed at the feeling of Sherlock wrapped around him and leaned into it because he couldn’t get enough of it.  John can never return Sherlock’s feelings so this will have to do, an elaborate lie of a memory where John is cognizant of what information his body is feeding to Sherlock and fully aware that Sherlock is in love with him and not only ok with it but encourages it.  

John suddenly scrunches his eyes tight and moves his hands deliberately and Sherlock begs him silently _no, please, just one more minute._  He quickly removes his hand from John’s face and clambers loudly back into the kitchen.  

“Hey,” John says in a voice heavy with sleep.  “Were you just standing over here?”  He asks, stretching his arms above his head and bringing them down to rub his now sore neck.    
  
“I was calculating the degree at which your neck was resting and trying to determine the severity of your discomfort level today,” he lies quickly.  

"Oh, right," John remarks and continues to rub a particularly sore knot out of his shoulder.

“I expect you’ll be wanting this,” Sherlock announces just a few minutes later, producing a perfectly crafted cup of English Breakfast tea and two paracetamols.  “For your neck,” Sherlock says and hands the pills to John, this time savoring the feel of his massive hand gently encased in John’s smaller one, if only for a split second.

 

* * *

 

“Sherlock, why is the toaster smoking?!”

Sherlock is too busy brooding to answer.    
  
“Sherlock?”

Still no answer.  
  
“SHERLOCK!”

“What,” he finally answers.

“The toaster is smoking, why is that?  It was fine yesterday and now it’s not.”  
  
“I dropped butter inside it last night.”

“Failed experiment then?”  John says, his voice dripping in sarcasm and frustration.

“No, I just wanted warm butter.  It slipped off and fell inside.”

John growls and mutters various curses under his breath and storms out of the house because, as usual, he’s running late to work.  No thanks to Sherlock, who immediately goes back to brooding.

 

* * *

 

“Sherlock, come on, you need to sleep.”

“No,” Sherlock says in that completely childish tone he takes when he wants to do what the person suggested but now won’t because he doesn’t want them to think he’s doing it on their orders.  

John sighs before saying, “You haven’t slept once while we’ve been here, I can see you’re exhausted.  It’s not good for you, you need to sleep.”  
  
“No,” Sherlock says again.  John huffs this time.

“I know it’s not ideal, two grown men in one bed, but you have got to sleep.”

“No.”  He draws out the tiny word as if it were the longest in the world.  John smiles that smile he smiles when he’s sick of Sherlock’s shit and enumerating in his head all the reasons why he shouldn’t punch him in the face.

“Sherlock, I’m not that bad of a bed fellow.  Here, I’ll even go down to the pub and leave you up here to fall asleep on your own.  You won’t even notice when I come in, all right?” John suggests as he gathers his jacket and wallet to go downstairs to spend the evening drinking good scotch and chatting up any woman that comes within a 10 foot radius of him.  “God, it’s like you’re purposefully avoiding sleeping or something, it’s mental,” he says under his breath right as he goes to open the door.

“You know why!  Even YOU could see why!”  Sherlock shouts without thinking.  He doesn’t know why he just blurted that out.  He’s pretty sure he’s got a surprised look on his face but he’s too stuck inside his own head to really care about what his face is doing currently.  But still, he’s never felt more vulnerable than in this moment.  

“Sherlock, just calm down,” John snaps.  “You’re still wired from the moor, the drugs, Frankland…”

“I am not wired!”  Sherlock yells, cutting John off.  “I am _fucking fine_ , stop treating me like I’m a bloody child!  You **know** why I can’t sleep in this bed with you!”  

John stands in front of the door, wide eyed and mouth closed tight in one thin line.  Sherlock is too anxious to care that he’s thoroughly pissed John off for the second time in less than 36 hours.  

“No, I don’t think I _do_ know why,” he says while shuffling his feet and staring down at the floor.  “Why don’t you enlighten me, Sherlock,” he finishes, bringing his devastating gaze to meet Sherlock’s own.

“Why don’t you just go downstairs and chat up some woman and leave me alone,” Sherlock spits, turning his back on John.  

“No,” John says, advancing on Sherlock and forcibly whirling him back to face him.  “You tell me what’s going on.  Right.  Now.”

They stare at each other harshly for several long moments, Sherlock defiant to keep his mouth shut from here on out, John determined to, for once in their lives, keep Sherlock talking.  

“I mean it, you tell me what the hell is going on here.”  John’s voice drops to a low whisper, that same tone he takes when he’s consciously trying not to yell.  

“This is tedious,” Sherlock sneers and turns to move away from John again.  But before he can turn his back, John pushes him against a wall and holds him there by his shoulder.  For being smaller than Sherlock, he really is remarkably strong.

“You.  Tell me.  What.  You.  Mean.”  John stresses the words and points a short, stocky finger in Sherlock’s face.  

“Right.”  He breathes in.  

“Now.”  He breathes out.

“You know why,” Sherlock whispers brokenly.  

“No, I don’t want any of that _as ever, John, you see but you don’t observe_ bullshit you love to throw at me,” John bursts out suddenly.  He takes several steps back from Sherlock, tries to calm his breathing, and looks down at his shoe when he says, “I want to hear you say it.”

John looks up at him again with an understanding and frustration and _is that longing?_ that makes Sherlock suddenly realise

_He already knows._

Sherlock’s heart is pounding wildly in his chest and he tries to keep his breathing calm and even so it doesn’t betray his real feelings to John and he screws his face up in an expression he’s pretty sure reads as _pained_.  He stares at John, and John stares back.  

“I can’t sleep in that bed with you because…”  His voice breaks.  He hates himself for opening this door because he doesn’t think he can walk through it now.  He’s never felt more nervous and scared.  What if he says the wrong thing?  What he pushes John away?  What if he laughs at him?  What if he moves out?  What if he leaves him all alone again? Sherlock doesn’t know if he can do this without John, not anymore.  He doesn’t think he’d want to.  

“Because?”  John barks.

“Because I _want_ to sleep in the bed with you,” Sherlock rattles hastily, hoping that was enough to satisfy John’s curiosity and they can go back to sitting reticently in each others’ presence and not mentioning their feelings or hopes or desires or wants or _base carnal needs._  

“I’m sorry, what?”  

“Oh, for God’s sake, do I really have to spell _everything_ out for you?”  Sherlock snaps as he rolls his eyes dramatically.

“Don’t,” John warns him before he can start on a tirade.  “Do not talk to me like that.”  Sherlock looks up at him and thinks he’s never seen John look more serious and intent in his entire life.  

“Do I really do that good of a job hiding it?”  Sherlock asks, a tone of desperation betraying his true feelings.  John’s expression softens at once.  “I thought it was obvious.  I thought _I_ was obvious,” finishes in a small voice better suited for a little boy than a fully grown man.  

John stands in the middle of the room, stock still and staring at Sherlock who can feel his eyes boring holes into his skin but doesn’t have the courage to actually look over to survey the damage.  

“So….you’re telling me….”  John trails off for a second.  Sherlock takes the opportunity to roll his eyes, huff quietly, and turn his head as far to the right as he can without actually turning his body away from John.  “You fancy me?”  He concludes.  

Sherlock can’t look at him.  Instead he stares at anything else.  He sucks his lower lip into his mouth and bites down hard.  He supposes he looks angry, embarrassed, shy.  He still doesn’t look at John when he jerks his head up and down erratically to signal that _yes, John, I fancy you, I want to throw you down on that bed and fuck you into the mattress and roll my tongue around in your mouth and only breathe in the air you breathe out and run my hands through your hair and suck bruises into your neck to let everyone know that you belong to me and I belong to you and all I want in life is for you to say you want that too._  
  
The air in the room is thick and palatable with awkwardness and humiliation and just a touch of anxiety.  Sherlock silently begs John to speak first because he’s pretty sure he’s lost his voice or maybe just his entire ability to talk or form words at all.  He tries to open his mouth to will all that expensive education vocabulary out of his head, but nothing comes out.  Sherlock Holmes is speechless.  

John clears his throat and says in a strained voice, “I’ll be back in a little bit, I need to think.”  

Sherlock doesn’t stop him as he quickly leaves the room.  He stands there, stunned and not quite sure what’s just happened for several moments.  He slowly turns and stoically climbs into the bed.  It smells like John.  It smells like tea and jam and latex doctors gloves and sunlight.  Sherlock closes his eyes and feels a dead weight settle right on top of his heart.  He inhales John’s sunlight scent and wonders if things can ever be the same.  

He knows they can’t.

 

* * *

 

“What sort of music did you like when you were a kid?”  John asks one night.  They’re eating at Sherlock’s favorite Chinese where he can always predict the fortune cookies.  Well, almost always.  Tonight Sherlock’s eating normally so he can carry on conversation like a regular person.

“What sort of music?”  Sherlock laughs softly, amused at the sort of things that John likes to know about him.  It seems to escape Sherlock that these are normal questions people ask when they’re getting to know someone.

“Yeah,” John starts as he picks at his pan fried noodles, “has it always been classical music or was there something else?”

Sherlock sits back in the uncomfortable chair and ponders what to tell John.  Should he lie and say he’s only ever liked classical music?  Or should he just tell him the truth?  Sherlock glances over at John who looks like he’s waiting on bated breath for his answer.  

“No,” Sherlock says, looking around the restaurant for something other than John to focus on, “it wasn’t always just classical music.”

“Oh!”  John exclaims his surprise.  “I wasn’t expecting that, I gotta admit.”  He puts down his chopsticks and prepares to listen rapturously to Sherlock’s revelations.  But Sherlock just looks around the restaurant confused.  

“What?”  He says dumbly.

“Well go on then,” John goads.  “Was it punk music?  A little Sex Pistols and Clash, eh?  Or maybe it was The Beatles during their psychedelic years?  Or gangsta rap!  Some NWA or Snoop?  I quite like Snoop,” he adds, digging back into his noodles for one more bite.

Sherlock can’t help but laugh at all of John’s suggestions.  Should he know who any of these people are?  He thinks he’s got The Beatles in his mind palace somewhere, they sound familiar.  A never ending stream of _na-na-na’s_ starts playing in his mind and he nearly has to shake his head to get it to stop.  Sex Pistols?  He’s suddenly thinking _God Save the Queen_ , but surely England has a king, doesn’t it?  He can’t really be bothered to remember these things.

“No, I…” He starts, feeling embarrassed.

“It wasn’t Brit-pop, was it?  Just tell me you weren’t secretly enamored with the Spice Girls or something,” John jokes.  

“Hey!”  Sherlock yells and flashes him an offended look.  The Spice Girls he does remember, but he doesn’t tell John it’s because he used to have a crush on Scary.  One thing at a time.

“All right,” he says, wiping his mouth.  His body language tells Sherlock that he’s ready to cooperate with him and not poke fun at him anymore.  “Go on, then.  I promise I won’t laugh,” John tells him.  Sherlock sighs and gives in.

“I was the right age when grunge music got popular,” he concedes.  

John’s eyebrows raise almost up to his hairline and Sherlock has to admit that he’s a little annoyed with this reaction.

“What?”  Sherlock snaps.

“Nothing, I just wasn’t expecting that.  Did you wear flannel and combat boots and worship Kurt Cobain?”  John teases, digging back into his noodles.

Sherlock looks out the window, watching the people passing by and let’s a quiet “yes” out.  He hopes that John hasn’t heard this and they’ll start talking about something else.  

“‘Yes?!’”

“Yes, all right, yes!”  Sherlock says, rolling his eyes harshly and heaving a heavy sigh.  “I wore dirty black shirts and let my hair grow long and _I worshiped Kurt Cobain_ ,” Sherlock exclaims, waving his hands about and looking furious.

John lets Sherlock calm down a little bit and flashes him an apologetic look.  Sherlock looks especially perturbed and John can’t figure out why.  

“Did you really worship Kurt Cobain though?”

“No,” he says simply.  He doesn’t know why he said he did.

“Who were your favorites?”  John asks Sherlock and he says it in a way that makes Sherlock think he actually does want to know.  John might have made fun of him, but it wasn’t meant to be cruel, and Sherlock knows this.  Sherlock understands now that he can talk to John about his childhood and not be made fun of.

“Nine Inch Nails.”

“Yeah?”  John asks.  Sherlock seems set on ending it there.  “Well go on.  Why that band?  Isn’t that the ‘fuck you like an animal’ band?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and fully gives in.  

“Yes, that’s the ‘fuck you like an animal’ band.  Mum insisted that I be classically trained in some instrument when I was younger.  I picked the violin and got made fun of for playing it constantly.  Then I found out that Trent Reznor is a classically trained pianist and I…” he trails off.  John waits for him to find his wording.  “It just made me feel better, all right?  I didn’t feel so alone.  He was off making art and not giving a shit what people thought of him and he was just as much of a ponce as I was.”  Sherlock uses the word that was often thrown at him by all the boys he was at school with.

“Oh,” John says in a small voice.

“Then I started listening to Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots and it was just…”  Sherlock stops and looks at John.  This is the most personal Sherlock has ever been with him.  “It just helped me not feel so much like a freak.”

“You’re not a freak, Sherlock.”

“Aren’t I though?”  

 

* * *

 

“Do you still listen to it?”  John asks as they walk back to the flat.  Sherlock doesn’t answer.  “You know you can, right?”  John says, looking up to see Sherlock staring forward.  “It’d be nice to have some different music playing around the place,” he says quietly,  almost more to himself than to Sherlock.  Sherlock glances toward him, eyebrow raised in offense.

“You don’t like my violin?  I asked you how you felt about it before we moved in together,” he says annoyed.

“No, I love your violin,” John states.  “It’d just be nice is all,” he finishes, shrugging his shoulders.  

Later that night, Sherlock listens to _In Utero_ in the living room and sips his scotch on the couch and pretends not to notice John listening to him sing quietly from the kitchen.

The next night, Sherlock feels comfortable enough to play music he discovered as an adult.  He lays on the couch and listens to _Ágætis Byrjun_ by Sigur Rós with his eyes closed so he can really feel the music.  Sherlock remembers learning to keep his love for this band a secret because the boys in his accommodations at uni all called him “poof” and “faggot” when they found out.  Same names, just different boys this time.

Sherlock is lost in the notes and Jónsi’s voice, so he doesn’t notice when John comes upstairs from Mrs Hudson’s flat.  He doesn’t notice John sets a scotch down on the coffee table for him.  He doesn’t notice when John sits down in his chair and listens to the music with him.  He doesn’t notice that John watches him for the rest of the night.

Sherlock remembers when _Sven-g-englar_ comes on.  He remembers because it’s the first time he thinks he might not have to hide who he is from John anymore.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've stuck with me, thank you so much. I've been in a really shit place creatively for a while now and grad school isn't helping. Please R&R -- even one word comments make me feel good!  
> XX K


	7. Karachi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But he needs John. He’d give it all up, if it meant having John. John is safe and strong and smart in ways that Sherlock never could be. And god, he’s beautiful. His eyes and hands and the way he hums in the shower and makes toast for breakfast because it’s easy and quick and he can never wake up on time to be at the surgery. Sherlock knows everything about John, all his habits and nuances and idiosyncrasies. There is no more deducing John Watson for Sherlock Holmes. He knows things John hasn’t even told him yet because he can read it in his body and eyes and stance, and Sherlock would never blurt them out because he knows it needs to come from John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A content warning for a very brief, fleeting mention of suicide before reading. Also, this chapter is solely AdLock. So if that doesn't particularly tickle your fancy, I'll just say that though it may outwardly be AdLock, I can assure you there's more than meets the eye going on. But if it really bothers you, feel free to skip this chapter! : ]
> 
> As ever, thanks for sticking with me during these long periods of hiatus, friends. Thanks for being cool. xx

Sherlock remembers the day he finally realizes he has more than just friendly feelings for John.  Sherlock doesn’t want to call it love because he’s not exactly sure what being in love is.  Is love thinking about the other person day and night?   Is love wondering what they’re doing when you’re not with them?  Is love wanting them to be happy?  Is love wanting them to be safe?  Is love when your mind refuses to let them go?  If it is, Sherlock supposes that he does love John, because all of these things apply to him.

Sherlock remembers it was in Karachi, after he saves The Woman from getting her head cut off.  Sherlock hasn’t fought to the death like that in, well, ever.  He’s never actually gotten to employ his fencing skills in anything, and truthfully, he’s quite nervous about the outcome of the sword fight; a foil is so much lighter than an actual sword.  But to his surprise, he also has some help.  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Irene elbow a man in the gut, sweep up his sword, and start cutting down her captors.  Sherlock remembers this because he wasn’t trying to kill anyone, just knock them out.   Irene though, she was going for death blows.

Without a word, Sherlock scoops her up into the nearby truck when everyone was either dead or unconscious.  They speed away and Irene chatters excitedly while Sherlock stays stoically silent.  Irene notices Sherlock’s deliberate silence and slinks an arm around his neck and breathes into his ear.

“What’s the matter, Mr Holmes?  That can’t have been that much of a fright…”

Sherlock doesn’t respond.  He keeps his eyes and attention on the road because his mind is racing and his heart is still beating a million times a minute.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she whispers in his ear, “it’s not like you…”  And then she trails off and starts kissing his neck.

Sherlock strains his eyes now because his adrenaline is still pumping and he doesn’t want Irene to notice the throbbing erection that popped up against his will the second she touched him.  He needs to pay attention because he can barely see where he’s going and the safe house is still at least 20 minutes away.  Sherlock starts running through various scenarios in order to calm down his severely neglected libido.

 

_Christmas Day 1994_

_The day Mycroft left for university_

_The first time he smoked marijuana_

_The day John gave himself a second degree burn when he dropped the kettle on his foot_

_Riding the Central Line and how much he detests it_

_Mrs Hudson’s breakfasts_

_The way his mother always swatted him on the head if he didn’t sit up straight_

_That time he diagnosed a classmate with cancer and was suspended from school_

 

Nothing’s working though.  No matter how mundane or incidental, his erection is still pulsing and pounding and painful.  He fidgets in his seat because Irene is now nuzzling his cheek and he knows it’s only a matter of time until she notices, if she hasn’t already and is just milking the moment for all it’s worth.  He starts replaying painful memories hoping that’ll do the trick.

 

_The day Mycroft caught him shooting up_

_The time his father told him he’d never amount to anything_

_When Moriarty kidnapped John_

_The overdose of 2005_

_The first time he and John fought and he watched John walk out of the flat thinking he would never come back_

 

“Oh…”

 

_Fuck_

 

Still silent, Sherlock tries to shake Irene off him, but she’s nothing if not persistent.  

“I never knew you felt that way, Mr Holmes.  Especially after all that dreadful business with your brother,” she soothes in his ear as she slides back next to him again.  And then Sherlock feels Irene’s hand sneak across his thigh and palm his erection and he knows he’s a goner.  There’s no turning back now.

Sherlock sharply veers the car off the road, all the while telling himself that when he stops the car, he’s going to tell Irene to keep her fucking hands off him or get in the backseat.  But all that really happens is that he takes one look at her before shoving her backwards against the passenger door and kisses her harshly.  Irene responds in kind and it’s everything Sherlock ever thought she’d be like.

Irene isn’t nice and she’s certainly not loving either.  She’s rough and noisy and jarring.  Sherlock’s only ever had two lovers in his life and she’s nothing like either of them.  He doesn’t quite know how to handle her.  Irene makes these guttural, base noises and Sherlock has to admit that it puts him off.  He supposes she does it to play up the whole “dominatrix” thing, but does she really have to right now?

Suddenly, Irene pushes him off her and commands him to move to the back of the humvee where there’s more room and Sherlock blindly does as he’s told.  He sits and stares silently at Irene and makes the conscious decision to just let her do whatever she wants.  Irene takes total control of Sherlock; to her, he’s nothing more than a living doll for all the input he’s giving.

Irene quickly undresses them both and he sees bruises, some fresh and some old, all over her body.  He realizes that she’d been brutally beaten from the moment she’d been captured and killed them all out of revenge.  But he barely has time to feel horrified or sympathetic because Sherlock remembers his head falling back and a heavy sigh escaping him as soon as Irene wraps her mouth around his cock.  It’s just so warm and wet and tight and _Jesus Christ,_ it’s been too long since someone’s done this to him.  Irene keeps working up and down and Sherlock vaguely feels her grab his hand and put it on the back of her head.  But he takes it off almost instantly.  In the back of his mind, he knows what he needs out of this and feeling long, smooth curls reminds him that he’s not getting what he _actually_ wants.  

He wants this to be John.  This needs to be John.  Why can’t this be John?

He closes his eyes and keeps his hands firmly at his sides and goes into the door marked FANTASIES ABOUT JOHN in his mind palace.  Sherlock does everything he can to not look at Irene while she’s down there licking and sucking him.  For all the fantasizing he’s done about Irene too, he thought he’d be more excited when they actually did have sex.  Sure, the vibrations against his cock are making him see stars, but Christ, does she ever stop all that fucking moaning?  

Sherlock notices something strange happening in his thoughts, that though he physically wants sex with Irene, he wants the emotional intimacy he would also get with John.  The constant struggle of his mind and his heart.  He was sure, up until when he met John, that he hadn’t actually had a heart.  But now, this ache in the pit of his stomach creeping up into his chest.  What is it?  Longing?  Desperation?  

Sentiment?

“You’re awfully quiet,” Irene says after she slicks off Sherlock’s cock with a loud pop.  He grunts his disapproval at the cessation and sudden draft, but he doesn’t open his eyes or even move his head towards her.  He sits there, hands now fisted into the crevices of the seats, trying to keep his head in the moment.  At this point, he’d be sorely irritable if he didn’t come one way or another, but he just can’t get his mind to stop wandering.  

“Ugh, keep going,” he grunts harshly at Irene.  He follows it up with a forceful, “Don’t stop.”

She obliges with a devilish smile and continues her ministrations on Sherlock’s prick.  Sometimes she pushes it as far into her throat as it can go, sometimes she licks long laps up the shaft, sometimes she focuses on the head only like she’s trying to draw the come out of him the way you draw poison from a snakebite.  The whole time she cups Sherlock’s balls softly, working them in her palms until she eventually starts licking and sucking those too.  

And Sherlock barely makes a sound.  He can’t remember the last time someone sucked him off, can’t believe he forgot how unbelievably amazing it feels, can’t believe he convinced himself he didn’t need this in his life.  But still, the nagging feeling won’t subside.  

 

_This isn’t the right person._

_This isn’t who you want._

_This isn’t John._

_John_

_John_

_John_

 

His mind and his heart, always warring.  He wants to get off, he wants this release.  He wants it like he wants the chase, like he wants cocaine, like he wants to always be right.

 

_John_

_John_

_John_

But he needs John.  He’d give it all up, if it meant having John.  John is safe and strong and smart in ways that Sherlock never could be.  And god, he’s beautiful.  His eyes and hands and the way he hums in the shower and makes toast for breakfast because it’s easy and quick and he can never wake up on time to be at the surgery.  Sherlock knows everything about John, all his habits and nuances and idiosyncrasies.  There is no more deducing John Watson for Sherlock Holmes.  He knows things John hasn’t even told him yet because he can read it in his body and eyes and stance, and Sherlock would never blurt them out because he knows it needs to come from John.  He’d never tell John he knows his father once punched him.  He’d never tell John he knows he loves Harry more than he lets on.  He’d never tell John he knows he slept with men in the army or that his Gran was his favorite person until she died unexpectedly and that’s why he became a doctor or that he once contemplated suicide.  He knows John needs to be the one to say these things out loud like how a child needs to ask why the sky is blue, why the grass is green, where babies come from, where we go when we die.  Because these are sacred things, and the only thing Sherlock knows for certain is sacred are John Watson’s secrets.  

“I didn’t think you’d be like this,” Irene says disheartedly as she dislodges herself from Sherlock’s prick again, breaking the silence.  He comes rushing back to the present and realizes he’s been thinking so much about John that he’s starting to go soft in Irene’s mouth.  He looks down just in time to see her climb up from the floor of the car and into his lap.  He doesn’t have time to react to her mouth clasping around his, stealing all his breath.  The taste of himself on her tongue jars him enough to at least try to appreciate all the work she must have put in down there and how tired her jaw must be.

“I know what you’re doing,” she coos into his ear, licking the outline of it.  Sherlock doesn’t say anything; his hands are still lodged into the seat cushions.

“You’re thinking about….” she trails off, kissing the curvature of his jawline and cheekbones.  He closes his eyes again and tries to imagine John’s lips.  John placing well meaning kisses on his face, the heat of John’s body against his chest, the weight of John’s bones resting in his lap.  

“John,” she finally says, pulling away just enough to see his dilated pupils when he rips open his eyes.  He knows he shouldn’t be surprised that Irene knows, Irene is one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met.  But still, the shock of someone, anyone deducing his heart…

He stares angrily at her for a few seconds before she clamps onto his mouth again.  This time, he doesn’t kiss back.  She fishes around his mouth, trying to goad his tongue to respond to hers.  But he doesn’t respond.  He doesn’t even shut his eyes.  

“Don’t be like this, Mr Holmes,” she chides, pulling off his mouth but grinding against his groin with hers.  “You forget, I know what people like.  Even you,” she says, still grinding, still trying to pump life back into Sherlock’s cock.  His body responds only from the friction.  His breathing slowly becomes labored; this is another sensation he forgot all about.  Irene doesn’t break eye contact with him.

“You know you can pretend I’m John,” she says grinding her sex against his slowly.  “I don’t mind, you’ve been doing it the whole time, haven’t you?  Trying to pretend I’m John Watson?”  She doesn’t stop her grinding.  She’s got the slow, maddening pulse down to a rhythm now.  She stares at him seductively, still working on getting him back to full hardness.  He still doesn’t touch her, still doesn’t utter a sound.

“Fuck me,” she says still keeping the rhythm.  “Fuck me like you’d fuck John Watson.”  His breathing stalls a bit in his chest, but he doesn’t move.  But then Irene whispers, “I want you to,” and it’s over.  He _growls_ as he flips her over on all fours, and like a mirage, the image of Irene fades into John, her voice sinking lower as it becomes his until all of Irene’s “yes, do it, now’s” sound just like the way John would.

Sherlock wastes no time, he slides into Irene’s hot, dripping center and sees stars again.  He moans unapologetically for the first time and falls onto Irene’s back as he gets used to the feeling of being wrapped around something as tight and firm as Irene’s pussy.  She braces herself with her hand against the armrest and pushes back against him, moaning _“yeeeess”_ as she does it, feeling him burrow deeper into her.  He wraps a strong arm around her torso and pulls her back as he straightens himself, feeling her move slowly up and down on his cock because he doesn’t have the willpower yet to do it himself.  

“Yes, ohhh, fuck me like John,” she groans over and over until he finally starts to pound against her.  She yelps and grabs onto his leg for support, holding onto anything that’ll keep her anchored.  He lets her fall down onto all fours again and grabs her hips, bucking into her wildly, her voice once again fading into John’s.  

Sherlock closes his eyes and imagines the straight lines of John’s hips, the feel of rough hairs against his legs, and not once does he feel embarrassed at the noises he’s making or when he starts chanting quietly _“John, John”_ like a penitent in prayer.  

“Yes,” Irene says in John’s voice and she grabs Sherlock’s hand to rest on her breast, and he keeps it there because it’s John bringing Sherlock’s hand to his nipple.  And so he squeezes it and runs it between his fingers just to hear John cry out “yes, more, harder, Sherlock.”  And so he obliges.  And he starts to pound harder into Irene and moans louder and doesn’t give a fuck that at this point he’s yelling John’s name.  Because Irene is responding in kind and shouting her own ecstasies and Sherlock can feel her walls start to tremble.  And he keeps pretending it’s John’s body under him, keeps crying out John’s name, keeps seeing and hearing John where Irene should be.  

He hears Irene in John’s voice cry out her orgasm and he grabs onto her hips to help ease her through it.  She pushes herself up against his chest and twists her head to kiss him passionately  as she continues to ride his length up and down.  He caresses her tongue and tastes John on his own.  He buries his hands in Irene’s curls and feels John’s bristly hair in his grip.  He breaks the kiss so he can catch his breath and works on Irene’s neck, feeling John’s five o’clock shadow and tasting John’s sweat.  He keeps bucking wildly and his legs start to burn from the effort and all he keeps saying is “yes, John, god, yes.”  

Sherlock hears Irene come a second time, this time crying out almost painfully from the over-stimulation, but she keeps riding him and he keeps bucking into her.  

“Come on, Sherlock,” she groans.  “What do you, _oohhh_ ,” she moans, catching her off guard.  “What do yo--you want me to say?”  She chokes.  

And for the first time, Sherlock addresses her.  “Tell me...tell me you want me,” he growls.

“ _I want you_ ,” John says.  He bucks harder through the tightening pain in his thighs.

“Tell me you need me,” he commands.

“ _I need you,_ ” John whines.  He bucks into her and she cries out in joyful agony.

“Tell me I’m beautiful,” he orders.

“ _Ugh, god, you’re so beautiful_ ,” John cries.  The pressure starts to build in his groin and a hot orb settles in his stomach and he starts to grind and rut into and fuck Irene harder.

“Mhh, tell me you’ll never leave,” he begs.

“ _I’ll ne--never leave you_ ,” John whimpers.  The pressure gets heavier and heavier and Sherlock is so close he can hardly stand it.

“Tell..tell m-- _uuuhh_ \-- tell me you love me,” he pleads.  

“ _I love you, Sherlock_ ,” John chants.  “ _I love you, more than anything._ ”

It was all he needed to hear.  Sherlock cries out John’s name as he comes, losing his balance and falling over on top of Irene who also comes one last time.  He holds onto her as he sees stars and replays over and over hearing John’s voice tell him what he didn’t know he desperately wanted to hear.  

 

_“I love you, I love you, I love you more than anything.”_

 

He slows down his pace until he finally stops, still inside her, his head resting against her back, lost in the moment that for one second, he had what he wanted and what he needed at the same time.  And he catches himself from blurting out “I love you too” because right at that moment, Irene begins to laugh and it’s not John’s voice he hears anymore.  Suddenly, it’s her tiny frame in his arms, her sweet, musky scent filling his nose, her voice drowning his thoughts.  

The shame immediately takes hold and he quickly dislodges from her.  She whimpers from the loss of body heat and the final movement of his prick inside her.  Sherlock moves as far towards the opposite side of the car as he can, as if he can hide from her in this tiny, cramped space.  The smell of sex and their sweat intertwined makes Sherlock’s stomach turn and he thinks for a very real minute he might actually be sick.  Irene continues to laugh and offer him backhanded praises.

“Dear me, Mr Holmes,” she says, fixing her hair and wiping the beads of sweat from her forehead.  “I have to say, that was 10 times better than I ever imagined it would be.”  Sherlock lets her continue uninterrupted, lost in his guilty thoughts.

“I haven’t come with a man like that in _ages_ ,” she coos, drawing out the first syllable.  “You really can’t have been a virgin like Moriarty said you were, not with skills like that.”  She’s just talking to hear herself talk at this point.  “You really do love him, don’t you?  You should tell him,” she advises, like the way a girlfriend tells another to just ask out the man of her dreams.  “I think you could make John a _very_ happy boy with--”

But she never finishes, because Sherlock catches her hand harshly around the wrist as she tries to brush his hair back.  Startled, she rips her hand away from Sherlock and stares ragefully at him.  

“Put your clothes on,” he spits at her, throwing her clothes at her while simultaneously gathering his own.  He throws himself out of the car to dress, wanting a moment to just be by himself to think about what’s happened.  As freely as he’d imagined Irene as John, as freely as he’d commanded her to speak in his voice, that was how humiliated and remorseful he felt now.  Sherlock is no stranger to feeling ashamed of himself, it’s what drives him to be as awful and hateful as he is to everyone.  But this, this is a new kind of shame, like he’s just done something that’s deserving of real, severe punishment.  Like he’s betrayed the one person he loves.  That he’d admitted he’s truly loved John all along, but did it while fucking another person.  This is the shame that settles in the pit of his stomach and grows roots up through his chest.  There’s no way John could ever love something as wretched as him, not now.   

A few minutes later, Sherlock climbs back into the car and is disappointed to see that Irene, now fully clothed again, is back in the front passenger seat.  Neither one speaks a word the entire way to the safe house, and for that, Sherlock is thankful.  

When they arrive 20 minutes later, Sherlock doesn’t even bother putting the car in park.  He stops the car gently and waits for Irene to get the hint that she’s going on alone. 

“You’re not coming with?”  She asks innocently.  After a short moment, Sherlock turns his head towards her without meeting her gaze.

“Goodbye, Miss Adler,” he says firmly.  Silently, she opens the door and steps out.  

“Goodbye, Mr Holmes,” she replies, closing the door behind her.  

Sherlock pulls out his phone, hastily punching the keys on his mobile.

 

_It’s done.  Get me out of here._

_S_

 

Within 60 seconds a reply comes.

 

_Took you long enough, brother mine.  Plane ticket waiting for you under the name Frederick Barbarossa._

_M_

 

He screws his face up in anger.  Mycroft never could resist making a jab.  The ridiculous, awful, amazing events rush through his head before he puts the car in reverse.  All he wants is to get back to London.  He just wants to be home.  

Sherlock looks up as he backs out onto the dirt road.  Irene is gone.  He never sees her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> R&R?? My lady loves Persephone, Venus, and Mary shine most favourably on those who take a second to give a kind word to a stranger! XX K


	8. Hiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In actuality, Sherlock’s really quite surprised to see John back in the room at all. He figured John would have found a pretty woman to hole up with for the night and forget all about Sherlock and his juvenile confession earlier on. If Sherlock is telling himself the truth, he almost hoped that would have been what happened and saved him the embarrassment of having to face John. They could have been good little British boys and stiff upper lipped this and carried on like nothing happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter might seem a little OOC for some. My interpretations of John and Sherlock aren't as emotionally constipated as Moffat and Gatiss would have us believe, so there are some feelings in this chapter. I tried to honour canon while also staying true to my own feelings about the two characters. 
> 
> Also, a line in this chapter is taken almost verbatim from my favourite fic [Cheat](http://www.archiveofourown.org/works/47366) by [Snegurochka](http://www.archiveofourown.org/Snegurochka/pseuds/Snegurochka). Just one author doing what's in her historian nature and citing her sources. ; ]
> 
> As ever, thank you so much for reading and supporting my amateur creativity with your kind words. It really does mean a lot to me. From this medicated and mighty grrrl to you, darling friends, thank you. xxxxxxx

Sherlock remembers hearing the door click open softly and John slide in quietly behind it.  He has an aura of caution, mindfulness about him, like he’s trying to seem as invisible as possible.  Sherlock realises it’s nearly midnight and that John will have expected Sherlock to be asleep by the time he got back.  A quick sniff of the air tells Sherlock John’s not as drunk as he thought he’d be.  John got three, perhaps four scotches in down at the pub before it closed up for the night.  John moves around the room as silently as possible.  In and out of the en suite, changing out of his jeans and button up shirt to his boxers and old army shirt.  John nearly makes Sherlock burst out into a fit of laughter when he almost knocks himself over trying to get his left sock off.  Maybe he’s a little drunker than Sherlock thought.

In actuality, Sherlock’s really quite surprised to see John back in the room at all.  He figured John would have found a pretty woman to hole up with for the night and forget all about Sherlock and his juvenile confession earlier on.  If Sherlock is telling himself the truth, he almost hoped that would have been what happened and saved him the embarrassment of having to face John.  They could have been good little British boys and stiff upper lipped this and carried on like nothing happened.  

Sherlock is even more surprised when John climbs into the bed next to him.  The shock of clammy feet brushing his for a fleeting second and the sweet smell of John’s peppermint toothpaste to mask the _*sniff*_ four scotches he had makes Sherlock jump.

“Budge over,” John commands.  “I’ll be damned if I let you steal this incredibly comfortable bed from me tonight,” he jokes, trying to break the tension.  

But it doesn’t really work.  They lay there next to each other in an anxiety ridden silence for what seems like ages.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t think about it, he just knocks.  Shivering, cold, and exhausted, Sherlock stands on the doorstep and waits for an answer.  He knocks again, this time louder, more insistent.  And still, he waits.  He shivers harder and rubs his eyes rougher and waits.  He knocks again, this time pounding on the door.  If he had his watch on, he’d know it was well past midnight and forgive that he’s been waiting for longer than 90 seconds for the door to open.  

Finally, it does.  Molly Hooper stands bleary eyed and annoyed at her front door, wondering what in God’s name brought Sherlock Holmes to her doorstep at such a late hour.  She considers admonishing him until she really takes in the sight of him.  His hair is a mess and his eyes are bloodshot and he’s not even wearing his Belstaff.  She waves him in without saying a word, and Sherlock follows in the same fashion.  She makes two cups of tea and sets one down in front of Sherlock, who’s already set up camp in her sitting room.  

“What’s going on?”  Molly questions in a sleep-soaked voice.  She blows on her chamomile and waits for a response.  Sherlock sits quietly with his eyes closed.

“Sherlock,” she croaks frustratedly, “Obviously something has happened and it’s ok, but you can’t just bang on my door at quarter to one in the morning and not expect to give me some kind of an explanation.”

Sherlock waits for a few seconds, then opens his eyes towards Molly.  

“Can I sleep here tonight?”

Molly sighs and groans disheartedly.  She pinches the bridge of her nose and rubs the sleep out of her eyes a little tougher than she should.

“Sherlock, please, I have to be at the hospital tomorrow, I had a long day today and an even worse date tonight, I really don’t want to give up my bed,” she rambles.  

“No, Molly.  It’s  fine,” Sherlock starts.  “I don’t want your bed, I just…” he trails off.  He sighs and holds his arms tighter to his chest to keep what little warmth he has still in him.  

“Sherlock,” Molly coaxes.  “What’s happened?”

Sherlock doesn’t feel like talking.  He doesn’t feel like telling Molly that he was so bored he shot holes in the wall, but not before spray painting a huge, yellow smiley face on it.  He doesn’t want to tell her about the fight he and John just had.  He doesn’t feel like telling her that John ran off to that doctor’s flat to hide out.  He doesn’t feel like telling her that an explosion just decimated his entire block and knocked him clean on his face.  He doesn’t want to tell her that he insulted and deduced every EMT within a 20 foot radius of him just to get them to leave him alone.  He doesn’t want to tell her that he walked to her flat on autopilot because he just did not want to be alone tonight.  

“It’s fine, I just want to sleep on the couch.  Can I sleep on the couch?”  Sherlock pleads.

“Please?”  He never pleads.

Molly goes into her closet and pulls out her warmest blanket and a pillow.  She wraps the blanket around Sherlock’s shoulders, kneels in front of him, and asks one last time, “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Molly,” Sherlock objects.  “I just want to sleep.  We both do.  I’ll tell you later.”

Molly nods and resigns herself back to her room.  She calls out quietly from the doorway, “Wake me up if you need anything.”  

Sherlock twists the blanket off his shoulders as he lays his head down.  He knows Molly bought this couch at a charity shop, not for its comfort but (hideous) pattern.  But, it’s better than nothing.  It’s better than the deafening silence and broken glass of Baker Street.  It’s better than wondering what John’s doing right now, who he’s doing it to, why he’s doing it.  It’s better than shooting more holes into smiley faces and hoping things will start to make sense.  He falls asleep almost instantly.

 

When Molly wakes up in the morning, she finds the two tea mugs in her drying rack, her blanket and pillow returned to their usual storage spots, and no sign of Sherlock having been there at all.

 

* * *

 

Laying in the bed next to John, it’s dark and only the moon lights up the room.  John is stiff and tense and almost supernaturally sobered up next to him.  Sherlock wants desperately to close the distance between them, to just reach out and feel John warm and alive under his touch.

“I’ve done it before, you know,” John says, finally breaking the silence.  Sherlock barely acknowledges him, only glancing slightly over to see that John is staring up at the ceiling.

“In the army.  It’s all chemicals and adrenaline and fear.  It’s all getting shot at constantly, trying to repair maimed soldiers, watching your friends die in front of you.  Killing people.  It makes you feel…”  John trails off.  He can’t quite find the words.

“Makes you feel what?”  Sherlock asks, mimicking John by staring up into the empty space.

“Makes you need to know that you’re really alive.  Makes you need to grasp out for the nearest living thing and grip and not let go.”

“That’s how I feel when I look at you sometimes,” Sherlock confesses.  It was easier to say than he thought it would be.

“It would ruin everything.  We could never come back from it.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything for a few moments.  He knows what John is saying is the truth.  John is never wrong when it comes to matters of the heart.

“I know,” Sherlock whispers.  His stomach is fluttering and he feels like he did when Samantha left him, like all his insides have been shucked out and all that’s left is a shell.

“But…”

Sherlock turns his head over to John, his face half lit up by moonlight, and Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat.

“This whole time, I’ve been trying to feel alive again, trying to reach out for anything to remind me that I’m still breathing.  But you make me feel alive, Sherlock.”

Sherlock remembers his eyes closing involuntarily when he feels John’s hand dip down under his pajamas and grip him tight.  He remembers he must have made a stupid face because he hears John laugh softly and then feels John’s other hand on his cheek.

John pushes himself up so that his forehead is resting against Sherlock’s.  The only sounds in the room are their breathing, ragged and laboured, and the soft noise of skin on skin.  Sherlock scrunches his eyes tight, letting out a desperate moan he didn't know was threatening to break free.  He exhales himself out and inhales John in, taking in everything he is, everything he ever will be.  Sherlock moans and he feels John huff out pridefully.  Sherlock reaches out for the first bit of John he can find, clutching onto his hip as an anchor, anything to keep him attached to this moment.

“Don’t stop,” Sherlock whispers harshly.  “Please.  Don’t stop.”

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Sherlock looks at John and all he feels is empty on the inside.  There are times when Sherlock thinks John could return his feelings.  And other times, Sherlock knows he can’t.  But at all times, Sherlock wonders where these feelings came from and how he was even able to develop them in the first place.  Regardless of his functioning, Sherlock is still a sociopath.  And sociopaths don’t have feelings.

Sherlock is something unworthy of love.  Sherlock is something unworthy of affection.  He knows this already, he’s known it for a long time.  This is why he constantly pushes people away.  This is why he never lets anyone near.  Because it’s easier to be alone, it’s easier to live without the hope of someone returning all the love he actually is capable of feeling.  Maybe he’s not a sociopath after all.  Maybe it’s just easier to pretend he is than to really have to connect with anyone and have them end up leaving.  It’s just less messy this way.

But then John walks into this life with his unboring leg and his unboring war stories and that unboring way he shot a man dead after knowing Sherlock for only a day.  John is a good person that reminds Sherlock how to be a good person.  He wants Sherlock to be a good person.  And so Sherlock tries to be a person for him.  

He just wants to give John what he needs.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers the first time John ever really talks about his sister.  Harry is three years older than him but you’d never know it from all the coddling John’s done with her.  John likes to pretend that he doesn’t get on with his sister because it’s less painful for him that way.  It hurts so much more to admit that he wants to be close with Harry, wants it to be like it was when they were kids, but that it just can’t be while Harry’s still drinking.

Sherlock remembers John telling him the story about the time Harry came out to their parents.  Their old parents.  Their old, conservative parents.  Their old, conservative, Catholic parents.  

Sherlock snaps to, realising John has been talking for some time while he lay on the couch filtering as he catalogues various clothing fibers in his mind palace, when he hears:

“When Harry was 18, she moved out with some of her mates.  We didn’t see her much for the next couple of years.  Broke Mum’s heart,” he says, rolling his eyes and sighing.

Sherlock keeps his stance on the couch, hands steepled under his chin, left foot crossed over his right.  He moves only his eyes in John’s direction.

“She came home for Christmas one year.  I was 17, getting ready to start uni soon.  It was like a stranger walked into the house.  She’d cut all her hair off, she had a hoop in her nose, huge bags under her eyes from the insomnia,” he huffs.  “She looked awful,” John adds under his breath.  
  
Sherlock continues staring, John continues talking into his tea mug.

“Dad barely spoke and when he did, it was only to me.  Asking about college and what kind of medicine I wanted to study at King’s or if I was gonna go into the military like him and Grandad.  It was so awkward…” John trails off.

Sherlock stares, half enthralled, half horrified, as a serious expression grows on John’s face.  Though he oddly remains devoid of any real emotion.  Detached.  Clinical, even.  Like he’d accepted long ago everything Harry was and wouldn’t be.

“You know, one thing led to another and Harry starts yelling. I still don’t have any idea how it all happened, just yelling how she always knew they hated her, how she was different, that she’s accepted it so why can’t they?”  John sounds like he’s recounting a boring movie he once saw for all the emotion he’s putting into telling this story.

“Dad chimes in finally and tells her to shut her mouth.  She snapped her head over at him.  I’ll never forget it.  She yelled, ‘Why, Dad? Cos you don’t want Mum to find out I’m a lesbian?’”  John concludes act one in his high pitch, affected voice he always uses for Harry when he’s making fun of her or generally annoyed at anything she’s done.

John breathes evenly though.  He’s still calm.  Still clinical.  Still detached.  Still blank, but somehow serious.  And Sherlock just continues staring.  

“I remember looking over at Mum...her whole face just dropped.  She started crying, of course, saying how it couldn’t be true, she’d raised her right.  Harry tried to reason with her, telling her she was still the same Harry, just that she wouldn’t have to keep this secret anymore.”  He rolls his eyes again, seemingly trying to convince himself that he wasn’t affected by telling this long neglected story.

At this turn of act two, his face shifts from serious to hurt.  It’s been so long since he’s told this story to anyone that it feels almost strange to say it all out loud now.

“Mum called her a freak.  She told her to get out of her house.  Never come back.”

Sherlock’s stomach twists into a knot at the word, but all he does is straighten his head, close his eyes, and sighs loudly.

“You know, I think that was the worst day of my life,” John says solemnly after a lengthy pause.  “And I’ve been to war,” he adds dryly.  

“There was just...there came a time when I couldn’t keep dropping everything to go take care of her, go sit with her, hold her hair back…” John trails off.   Sherlock thinks he’s finally done, but then he hears John say the most personal thing he’s ever said so him.  

“It used to hurt knowing that my sister loved alcohol more than she loved me.”  He says it with ease, dropping back into that same clinical tone from before.  But any other person, any emotionally mature, kind, sensitive person would have picked up on the latent twinge of regret and grief in John’s voice.  But Sherlock is none of those things, is he?

Instead, Sherlock barks, “Why are we talking about this?”  John looks over at him, that blank expression changed into one of anger and offense.  

“You’re the one that brought it up,” he snaps at Sherlock.

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”  Sherlock says sardonically.  John straightens his body, looks out towards  the window for a moment, and sighs sharply.  Sherlock studies him, that tense body language, the way he rubs his temple when he’s trying not to explode, that angry smile he does when he’s trying to calm down but it’s just not working.

John gets up out of his chair and paces for a second in place.  He starts towards the kitchen, but changes his mind and instead yells, “You know, you can be a real prick sometimes!  Sometimes?  What am I talking about, all the time!  You are a right _bastard_ , Sherlock.  You sit there and you poke and you prod, you do that stupid filtering thing because someone who isn’t you is talking for once.  You let me think it was ok to tell you this stuff, the stuff you KNOW IS HARD FOR ME TO SAY!”

Sherlock’s eyes widen when John starts actually screaming.  His heart starts pounding wildly in his chest.  His breathing hitches and picks up.  But he stays silent.  He knows anything he says might make John libel to haul him off the couch and punch him in the mouth just to get him to shut up.

John gets done berating Sherlock and stands in the threshold of the kitchen, breathing harshly and raggedly.  He stares angrily at Sherlock who’s still too stunned to speak.

“Say something,” John demands.  But Sherlock doesn’t know what to do.  “WELL?”  John shouts.

“I...I don’t know what you want me to say to you,” Sherlock responds timidly.

“You remind me a lot of my sister,” John sneers.  “Selfish, dismissive, _unapologetic_.”

John turns on his heels and makes for the staircase.  Sherlock quickly twists on the couch to watch him march upstairs.  

“John,” Sherlock calls out.  He stops at the landing.  Sherlock ponders for a second, and reasons that perhaps an apology, which will cost him nothing while assuaging John’s anger, might be the best option here.  “I’m sorry,” he concedes.

John laughs mirthlessly.  “Fuck you, Sherlock,” he spits.  He makes sure to slam his door hard enough that it rattles the air downstairs when he makes it to his room.  

Sherlock lays back on the couch and wonders what just happened.  He doesn’t know how to process this or why John said he reminded him of his sister.  There’s no possible way he could remin--

Sherlock’s sight catches on the skull.  His looming reminder.  

 

_Selfish, dismissive, unapologetic_

Mycroft once called him unapologetic.  One of the times he dumped him in a fancy rehab.  He said Sherlock was an unapologetic little prick who didn’t care who he hurt in his quest to hurt himself.   

It hits Sherlock then that Harry is to John what he is to Mycroft.  Sherlock is a perpetual child and all Mycroft does is run around and clean up his messes.  All Mycroft does is wait around to be loved by Sherlock, who is the only person in the world that Mycroft actually cares about.  All Mycroft does is act in the hopes that someday all his caring will elicit some kind of gratitude from him.  All Mycroft ever wanted was to protect him and Sherlock threw that back in his face like engine fluid, like poison, like yolk.  

And Sherlock can’t help but find it incredibly ironic that he should not only fall in love, but fall in love with someone who’s spent _their_ entire life dealing with the same bullshit Sherlock metes out on a daily basis.  He can’t help but find it ironic that the confrontation of the pain he’s caused should be in the form of John Watson, the funniest and kindest and warmest and most caring, forgiving, brilliant human being he’s ever known.

Sherlock pulls himself off the couch and feels the weight of his guilt settle in his shoulders.  He toes silently towards the kitchen, undeciding if he wants to go sulk in his room or up to John’s.  At the last second, he turns towards the landing and makes his way up the stairs, making sure to skip the creaky fourth step.  But half way up, he wavers.  What can he possibly say to John to make this better?  

Where would he even begin?  

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers that first night back in Baker Street after Dartmoor.  John seems to be pretending that what happened the night before hadn’t actually happened at all.  It’s as though everything is perfectly normal between the two of them.  John goes straight into the bathroom for a shower, and then immediately up to his room and shuts the door quietly behind him.  Sherlock turns on the telly and makes himself a cup of tea, accidentally on purpose adding too much sugar to it, and pretends to pay attention to _Britain’s Got Talent_.  

When he can’t take it anymore, he sulks into his room.  Sherlock collapses on the bed, burying his face in his pillows, and tries to keep his emotions locked away in his mind palace.  But he can feel them boiling to the surface anyway.  He’s afraid that John was right and now everything is changed.  He’s afraid that John will forsake him.  He’s afraid John will move out and leave him here all alone.  Just as the sting of tears start to burn his eyes, he hears the door open behind him.  He turns around to see John, his hand still on the knob and shutting the door softly after him,  a sad but somehow hopeful look on his face.  

Sherlock swings his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up.  John walks slowly over to him and stops right before him.  Sherlock cranes his neck to look up at him; neither one of them says a word.  John looks over Sherlock’s face like he’s studying him, and that’s because he is.  Sherlock stares into John’s eyes, no matter if John is staring into his or not.  Sherlock waits under his gaze.  He can be patient.  He can be patient if it’s for John.  

John can’t think of a time when he’s seen Sherlock so vulnerable.

John finally moves to smooth the curls out of Sherlock’s eyes, and then cups his face.  He stays there like that for a moment and the two of them just look at each other.  A shiver runs down Sherlock’s spine; he has no idea the last time he felt like this.  He has no idea if he’s ever felt like this.  John smiles at him softly and any anxiety Sherlock might have been feeling is obliterated.  He feels peaceful, free, alive.  

John can feel Sherlock soften at this.  It’s something he never thought he’d experience.

John moves slowly down to Sherlock’s lips and kisses him softly.  He lingers above Sherlock’s mouth, breathing in Sherlock’s air, replacing every molecule in his body with Sherlock’s.  He kisses him again, this time pressing his lips firmly against Sherlock’s and stays there for a long moment.  The emotions Sherlock tries so hard to keep locked away come flooding to the surface and a choked moan escapes his throat.  He grabs John’s wrists, and John breaks the kiss.

“Hey,” John says sweetly, “you ok?”

Sherlock hangs his head.  He doesn’t want John to see him.  He doesn’t want John to see the mess of a man he really is.  He doesn’t want John to see how lonely he’s been for as long as he’s been.  He doesn’t want John to see that he’s not as strong and stoic as he pretends to be.

But John has never judged him, John would never judge him.  John _will never_ do that.  Sherlock knows that.  John killed a man for him after knowing him for 24 hours.  He refused to spy on him in exchange for money he desperately needed.  He’s never called him “freak” and has defended him against the people that have.  

“I don’t want to hide from you anymore,” Sherlock whispers, raising his head to John, showing him the tears that threaten to spill out of his eyes.  

“You don’t have to.”

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk for the rest of the night.  Instead they spend hours exploring each other’s bodies and kissing and fucking and feeling alive.  Sherlock memorizes all the peaks and valleys of John’s body and touches his scar, that beautiful, ugly, wretched, breathtaking scar, for the first time.  John touches Sherlock in places he hasn’t been touched lovingly in years and reduces the arrogant sod to nothing more than a moaning puddle.  And Sherlock doesn’t mind; he can’t remember the last time he felt so...happy, he guesses is the word.  Sherlock can’t remember ever having been happy.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock remembers jumping.  He wishes he didn’t.  It’s the reason he can’t sleep at night.   When he dreams, he hears John’s voice screaming his name as he’s falling.  It haunts him more than anything ever has.

He remembers having to lay there on the pavement, his eyes wide open and his breath held tight, watching John crumble to pieces in front of him.  It’s the most torturous thing he’s ever experienced.    
  
Years later, after Sherlock has lived through actual torture, he’ll still consider this the most painful moment of his entire life.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm personal friends with Persephone and Hecate. I have it on good authority that anyone who R&R's will get beaucoup bonuses in the Underworld. 
> 
> XX K


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